Is there anyway to order the fields in 'mail merge recipients'?

[JethroUK©]

I have quite a few (potential) fields in my mail merge data source, and
since MS requires an absolute path to the data source i have to reconnect
every time i want to use it which in turn means i also have to set up the
query every time

I notice that when setting up the query ('mail merge recipients') that the
fields seem to be in no particular order - meaning the ones i need are
'sprinkled about somewhere'

Is there anyway to order the fields in 'mail merge recipients'?

 

[Peter Jamieson]

You can resequence the columns temporarily by dragging and dropping them,
but the sequence is lost when you close either the dialog, the document or
Word (I forget).

Word (a) recognises certain address-related column names ("City", "State",
that sort of thing) and always presents them in a certain sequence
regardless of the sequence of columns in your data source. So to get a
cerain sequence the safest bet is
a. sequence the fields in the data source if possible
b. name the fields using something that will sort into the sequence you
want, e.g.

01_lastname
02_firstname
03_whatever
....and so on

or if necessary

f01_lastname
f02_firstname
f03_whatever
....and so on

(you may find that some field names are rejected/modified by Word).

 

[JethroUK©]

I might get away with renaming some fields so it doesn't recognise/reorder
them - thanks

ultimately it would be nicer to have relative path to data source so i can
connect/query it once ( i had to do it four times/four machines today grrr)
and forget about it - i'd be tempted to buy Office 2007 if i thought for one
minute they might have fixed this