Word 2003 merge with Access 2003

[Andrew]

Since upgrading to Office 2003, many of my users have had
problems with the mail merge. I have an Access database
with workgroup security that I need to merge into Word
documents. Prior to the upgrade (Office XP), users
didn't always use the secured workgroup, but rather the
default - the secured was accessed through the shortcut.
This way, the users didn't need a password except for the
secured database. When the user wanted to merge a Word
document, she would open the Access database, go back to
Word, and merge the document (the queries would ask her
questions if necessary and the document would be built).
Simple.

Now, when the user tries to merge the document, Word
opens another instance of Access, tries to log in and
gives an error re: lack of permissions to open the
database (b/c the new instance didn't go through the
shortcut, the database couldn't open without the
workgroup). So, I've moved her over to permanently use
the Access workgroup - thus eliminating the error.
However, Word still opens another instance of Access to
do the merge, requiring her to enter her username and
password again. This is very cumbersome.

So, I tried to do the merge starting in Access (using the
Office Links choice under the Tools menu), but this
didn't work at all. I'm beginning to like Office 2003
less and less.

My questions: How do I keep Word from opening another
instance of Access (just use the database that is already
open)? Is there a better way to do what I'm doing?

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[Tom Toews]

Andrews,

I noticed this scenario also when I opened merge document created in Word
2000 in Word 2003. However, when I converted the document back to a normal
document and then recreated the merge data source, Word 2003 no longer
opened up an instance of Access 2003 to perform the merge.

Tom

 

[Andrew]

Thanks for your reply. That worked on one computer, but
the main computer that I'm having trouble with, I
couldn't even setup the datasource on the new document.
For some reason it said that the user didn't have
permission to open the database.

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi Andrew,

I think it will help you understand a bit better if you read
the Word 2002 section of my website's mail merge FAQ (fully
applicable to 2003). Beyond what's there:

Opening a second instance of Access: Obviously, this older
document was linked to Access using DDE. DDE is very old
technology, comes from the days when applications always had
the same text in the title bars, so a running instance was
indentifiable by checking the title bar text.

This has changed in Windows, and Access especially has also
made it easy to change what appears in the title bar. If
you've put a nice, friendly name in there, then the problem
is quickly explained (It's not the only cause, but the
most tangible and frequent; you'll find more on this on Dev
Ashish's website, there should be a link to that from my
LINKS page.) And this happens in all versions of Word mail
merge since Word 97, BTW. It's not unique to 2002 or 2003.

Generally, I tell people ODBC is the most reliable way to
link to an Access database for mail merge. An ODBC DSN can
also be set up to login to a workgroup. Only this won't work
for queries that contain user-defined (non-Jet) functions or
that prompt for input (parameter queries). Both of these
require the Access interface, and therefore DDE.

Since upgrading to Office 2003, many of my users have had
problems with the mail merge. I have an Access database
with workgroup security that I need to merge into Word
documents. Prior to the upgrade (Office XP), users
didn't always use the secured workgroup, but rather the
default - the secured was accessed through the shortcut.
This way, the users didn't need a password except for the
secured database. When the user wanted to merge a Word
document, she would open the Access database, go back to
Word, and merge the document (the queries would ask her
questions if necessary and the document would be built).
Simple.

Now, when the user tries to merge the document, Word
opens another instance of Access, tries to log in and
gives an error re: lack of permissions to open the
database (b/c the new instance didn't go through the
shortcut, the database couldn't open without the
workgroup). So, I've moved her over to permanently use
the Access workgroup - thus eliminating the error.
However, Word still opens another instance of Access to
do the merge, requiring her to enter her username and
password again. This is very cumbersome.

So, I tried to do the merge starting in Access (using the
Office Links choice under the Tools menu), but this
didn't work at all. I'm beginning to like Office 2003
less and less.

My questions: How do I keep Word from opening another
instance of Access (just use the database that is already
open)? Is there a better way to do what I'm doing?

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep
30 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any
follow question or reply in the newsgroup and not by e-mail