Broadly speaking, Word has two ways to get data from a Works database:
a. the Word way, where you use the Mailmerge Wizard or Toolbar to select
your data source
b. the Works way, which uses a special addin that comes with Works to get
the data from your .wdb. This installs a Tools menu item called "Address
Book Mail Merge". if you see that menu, try creating your merge using it,
and select "Merge information from another type of file" when prompted.
As far as I know, if you use (a) you may see the "formula" error you
describe, although I would not expect it if you have no formulas in your
..wdb. If you use (b), the add-in should process the formulas correctly if
there are any. If you do not see the Address Book Mail merge option, either
the works addin is not installed or not working. If it is not working, it
could be because you are using Word 2003 rather than Word 2002 which I think
is still the version that comes with Works Suite (but I haven't kept
up-to-date on that front).
To check if you do have any formulas in your .wdb, you can
a. open the database
b. use View|List to show the data in "spreadsheet" format
c.select the first field in the first row, and look at the formula bar
above - if it just contains a value, you will see something like
"thevalue.
If it contains a formula, you will see something like
=theformula
e.g. =fielda+fieldb
etc.
Personally, I wouldn't try too hard to get .mdb format to work. In the long
run it may be easier to get used to exporting the data from Works Database
(I would use File|Save As, and choose "Text & Commas" or "Text & Tabs" in
the "Save as type" dialog box).
Peter Jamieson
