Mail merge hang, MS Word 2000 mail merge to MS Excel

[alex-google-groups]

A few days ago, MS Word 2000 stopped mail merging documents. The
symptom is as follows: When MS Excel is invoked to read the data
source, MS Word hangs saying either "Initiating DDE connection to
Microsoft Excel" or "Starting Microsoft Excel" on the status line. One
can replicate this by generating a new spreadsheet (test.xls)
containing any nine numbers in a square, saving it, starting a new MS
Word document, selecting Mail Merge, and selecting test.xls as the
data source. After about 2 hours (!) the box asking whether I'd like
to select the entire worksheet as a source comes up. This used to work
immediately. The only thing I installed between the two instances was
a minor HP printer driver update. Web reports suggest it fails
randomly. If "Select merge source" is selected (to avoid DDE), I can
import successfully using the converter. ODBC fails silently. However,
it appears to be impossible to load existing saved documents with
merge sources as I can't select the converter.

I have once or twice got "Word could not re-establish a DDE connection
to Microsoft Excel to complete the current task."

I am running Word 2000 Standard SP-3 fully patched on XP fully
patched.

To correct this I have tried the following (gleaned from the web):
1. Repairing the existing installation, and rerunning with "/
regserver"
2. Removing the entire Office installation, rebooting, reinstalling,
loading all service packs, rebooting.
3. Renaming registry keys so these get reinstalled, renaming all
instances of normal.dot, removing contents of word and excel start up
directories.
4. Ensuring "ignore other applications" is not set to "on" in Excel
5. Replicated with new documents (see above) to check it's not
corrupted documents. Loaded documents that hang on this machine on
another machine running seemingly identical software, where they work
perfectly.
6. Searched MS knowledge base.
7. Ensured no files in My Documents are set to "read only" (tip from
the web).

Putting a simple DDE field to call Excel into Word also hangs it. I
think the problem may be that DDE from Word has ceased working
entirely.

Any ideas?

 

[alex-google-groups]

A few days ago, MS Word 2000 stopped mail merging documents. The
symptom is as follows: When MS Excel is invoked to read the data
source, MS Word hangs saying either "Initiating DDE connection to
Microsoft Excel" or "Starting Microsoft Excel" on the status line ....
Putting a simple DDE field to call Excel into Word also hangs it. I
think the problem may be that DDE from Word has ceased working
entirely.

I fixed this. Apparently the problem was that I had removed an old HP
OfficeJet printer driver (which was unused, and had not been selected
on either the word file or the the spreadsheet). To fix it, I removed
the application as well as the driver, cleaned the printer spooler (by
removing all drivers), and reinstalled them (which involved hacking
the registry around to reinstate the standard TCP/IP port monitor).
This appears to fix it. Therefore it seems one of the possible causes
of the DDE hang when mail-merging is to do with printer drivers.

Alex