Hi Paul, thanks for the reply
to address the points

1. Maybe merge documents shouldn't be saved as templates, but it worked flawlessly in the version I was previouly using (2003)

2. I tried over and over to update the datasource to the actual template and also to the main merge document.

I also tried the last point over and over and over again, but yet it still will not retain the data source.

I have no problem with other docments where I'm using Access db files as the data source. But this CSV file is giving me problems - I'm starting to suspect that it has something to do with merging with csv's and not necessarily merging in general?