Running a Word merge from within an Excel Document

[Alex Maghen]

I have an excel sheet which contains the data-source to be used in a frequent
Mail Merge set up in an MS Word document. I'd like to place a button on the
Excel spreadsheet which can be clicked to automatically run the full merge
from the Word document and I have a few problems/questions for doing this in
VBA:

1. Even assuming that my VBA stuff is digitally signed, when the Word merge
template document opens, it pops up a dialog indicating that it's about to
perform a SQL query on the excel file. Is there any way to suppress that
either in the VBA or in settings in the Word merge template document?

2. I suppose I have to open the merge template document from my VBA. I'd
like to open it if it's not already open but I'd like it to be invisible. I
don't really need my user to see the merge template document. It doesn't mean
anything to them. How can I do this?

3. I want to automatically cause it to merge all records to a new Word
Document. THAT document I *would* like displayed to the user. Lost on how to
do this too!

Thanks a lot for your help!

Alex