Can a mail merge template access a SQL Server DB table for
Yes, but...
a. if you are using Word 2002 everywhere, it should be fairly clear how to
proceed to connect to a simple table, but if you are using a mixture of Word
versions you will probably need to use ODBC and MS Query to set up the merge
(and there are other reasons why that may be a good approach.
b. with ODBC, you will need either a machine (user/system) DSN on each
machine or a file DSN accessible from each machine, so you will need to
think about how to create/distribute/access that (AFAIK a file DSN can be
located on a network path). You cannot use a DSM-less connection. With OLEDB
(Word 2002 and later) you will have to distribute a .odc file with your
application.
c. In WOrd 2002, MS Query is hard to find - it's on the Tools menu in the
Select Data Source dialog.
The merge would have to be able to access separate records
on a SQL Server database table depending on the user.
....to do this you would either have to set up SQL Server views that return
the right records for each user (traditionally I think you would probably
define a Transact-SQL procedure and connect to that, but I think you will
have difficulty getting that to work after Word 2000), or use VBA to create
a different query for each user dynamically, based on the user name/ID (the
chances are that if your SQL Server installation uses Windows security then
you can grab the correct user name from the environment variable
"USERNAME"). Then issue either an OpenDataSource or change the QueryString.
