Why Does Mail Merge Suddenly Not Work in my template?

[fatgreta]

Hi,

I spent a couple of hours creating a mail merge document in Word 2002
(10.5815.4219) SP2. It worked fine for about 3 months. Today, when I opened
the file, the mail merge toolbar is greyed out, and I cannot sort through the
different records in my list of names (in an excel database). The only record
available is the last one I entered into the excel database. I entered a new
name today, but cannot switch the word document to read that record. This
happened once before, and it seemed that the easiest thing to do was just
re-create the document. However, it's not the easist thing to do if I have to
do so every 2-3 months. I never could figure out why it happened then, and
can't now either. Generally, when I close the word document (after printing
it) I click on save changes when asked, but after the last printing I may not
have done that - could that be part of the problem?

If there is any way to "turn mail merge back on" or whatever else might
work, please help. Being able to work this way saves me a great deal of time,
but it isn't going to be worth it if I have to create a new merge document
every couple of months.

thanks,

Chris

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Did you try to reconnect to the data source, e.g. using the second button on
the mail merge toolbar (the first 2 buttons or so should not be greyed out)
?

(Yes, sometimes Word does lose its data source, and it is not always clear
why).

 

[fatgreta]

Hi, thanks for writing back. You are a life saver! That did the trick, many
thanks.

Chris