mail merge (more than 255 characters)

[allenglishboy]

I am trying to do a Mail Merge in WOrd 2003 from Excel file. Some of the fields are over 255 characters. I have read online that you can have fields larger than 255 charaters if you click tools> options> general and ensure that the "confirm conversion box" is checked.


I have tried to do this
When i click Open data source and browse to the file that I want to merge from I get a window that says Confirm Data Source and it has two options. The First option is OLE DB Database Files, If i click this option the merged document only has 255 characters.
If i click the second option, "Excel Files via ODBC", then i get the error message that "Word was unable to open the data source"
any help you could offer would be greatly appreciated, By the way, I am using word 2007.