First,
Does the dialog box you see just have
"Microsoft Excel" in the title bar
then
Named or cell range:
with a text box and a drop-down list saying
Entire Spreadsheet
Query
Other stuff
?
If so, "Query" and "Other stuff" are the named ranges that Excel thinks are
in the first worksheet of your workbook (more or less). If the thing you
actually want to retrieve is in one of the other worksheets, you will not be
able to get it using this connection method (DDE) - you should go through
the connection process again and check the "Select method" box in the Open
Data SOurce dialog. Then choose the Excel via ODBC connection method. You'll
probably then need to check the options box in that and check all the
Tables, Queries etc. checkboxes before you can see your named range.
Also, if your "query" range is being populated by a query set up in Excel's
Data menu, don't expect to see up-to-date data unless you are connecting via
DDE and updating the data before merging.
However, it sounds to me more as if you could be selecting "Query" because
you want to query the data. but as I mentioned earlier, you are just
selecting a named range in the first worksheet. That will only work as a
mail merge data source if ithe first row of the range contains column
headers (i.e. names for the columns). And just because there is a named
range in your worksheet doesn't mean that it contains anything in
particular. The name could have been left over from some previous operation.
So maybe what you really need is to select "Entire spreadsheet".
I have several workbooks filled with names & numbers,
however they contain other info that I do not want. The
form letter now has the fields ((first_name)) etc, however
it does not give me the option of title...Mr /Mrs.......
Well, I'm not sure how your Excel sheet is structured, but
a. just because a column is listed in Word's list of merge fields does not
mean you have to use it. So if your chosen sheet or range name contains more
columns than you need, that does not matter very much.
b. if you need data from more than one worksheet, none of the connection
methods is really going to help - the best you can do is select a single
sheet, a named range within a sheet, or specify a range of cell addresses.
None of these can span worksheets. You /might/ be able to use MS Query to
construct a query that will gather the data you need, but it sounds to me as
if what you should do is first create the data source you need in Excel or
elsewhere.
I guess I'm basically just stuck @ Step 2.
I have 5000 letters to go out.......so if you could help
me with this.........I would be soooooooooooooo grateful.
Sorry about this, but I'll probably be away until the weekend. But if you
can be more specific about where your data needs to come from maybe someone
will be able to help.
