MS Query is part of Office so you should have it already. However, it may
not have been installed depending on what you chose during SETUP, so you may
need to go to Control Panel to sort that out. It is also rather hard to find
the MS Query option in Word - when you get to the Select Data Source dialog
box, look for the Tools menu in the top right - MS Query should be at the
bottom of that.
However, you should only need MS Query if you need to create a query to
filter and/or sort the data in some way that cannot be done in the Advanced
filter/sort dialog in Word. If you already have a table or view in SQL
Server that gives you exactly the data you need, you can connect to that
without using MS Query.
Assuming you do not need MS Query, you can make the connection as follows:
a. Choose Word Tools|Letters and Mailings|Mail Merge... Word displays the
Mail Merge Wizard, Step 1.
b. Select the document type (say Letters) and click Next to get to Step 2
c. Leave "Use the current document" selected and click Next to get to Step
3
d. Leave "Use an existing list" selected and click Next. The Select Data
Source Dialog box should be displayed. If it opens with the default folder
showing (My Data Sources) you should see an item called "+New SQL Server
Connection.odc". If not, navigate to My Data Sources. If you still don't see
the item, jump to point (m) below. If you see it, select it and click the
Open button.
e. You may see a dialog box saying "Confirm Data Source", with an entry
"OLE DB Database files" selected. If so, click OK. This may pop up again
later - if so, clcik OK.
f. You should now see a "Data Connection Wizard" prompting for the server
name. Enter the name of the Windows computer that is running SQL Server
(e.g. myserver). If you have a complex multi-instance SQL Server environment
this may not be enough and I don't know what you put there, so let's hope
you haven't...
g. Either accept "Use Windows authentication" or click the other button and
enter your SQL Server user name and password, depending on how
authentication is managed by your SQL Server server. If you don't know, you
will need to ask your SQL Server administrator, but in essence, with
"Windows Authentication" your permissions in SQL Server are associated with
your Windows networking logon, so you do not (usually) need separate logon
credentials. Click Next
h. You should now see a list of databases available on the server, and
tables within the currently selected database. Select the database, if
necessary check "Connect to a specific table", then select the table, and
click Next.
i. In the next dialog, you are asked for a file name for the connection
info. you have just entered. The file created will be an "Office Database
Connection" (.odc) file, which is an HTML file with some XML in it. if you
selected Windows Authentication in step (g), the option "Save password in
file" should be greyed out. If not, only check it if you do not mind having
your username and password stored in the .odc file in plain view. Click
Finish.
j. Word should now create the .odc file and select it as the data source.
If you selected Windows Authentication, or opted to store the password in
the .odc file, you should see the "Mail Merge Recipients" dialog box. If so,
you can now click OK and continue setting up your merge document. I would
check fairly early on that when you close and re-open your document, Word
correctly reconnects to the SQL Server table/view.
Otherwise, if you did not sleect Windows Authentication and you did not opt
to store the password, you will probably see a standard OLEDB "DataLink
Properties dialog box. You will need to provide the password here, and you
will also need to check the "allow saving password" box. Note that although
this suggests that the password will now be stored in the Word document, if
you save and close the document and re-open it, the DataLink Properties
dialog box should be redisplayed and you will have to re-enter the password.
If you now create a new mail merge main document and select the recently
created .odc file as your data source, you should only see the Datalink
Properties dialog box if you did not select Windows Authentication, you did
not opt to store the password, or (maybe) if the login/password is no longer
adequate.
If you do not check "Connect to a specific table" in step (h), you will be
asked for the table in step (j) just after Word has selected the .odc as the
source.
If you need to use MS Query, the process is rather different, but perhaps
you can let us know if that is the case.
