Word crashes when link Access via OLE

[Grace]

I have tried to link to various Access databases with old
and new Word merge files via the default connection -
OLE. Whenever I do this, Word says that it needs to
close. It crashes whenever I try to link to the database.
This only started happening in the last couple of months.
Does anyone know why?

I tried connecting via DDE and that appears to work fine.
Is there a downside to using DDE instead of OLE?

FYI, I'm running WindowsXP and Office 2002.

Thanks,

Grace