I am using word and mail merge. I am familiar with much of mail merge and mostly it works fine. I am working form a mail merge template that connects to an access database. This obviously creates an new document each time it is opened. Usuall this routine works perfectly.
But sometimes when the doc is clicked open word does not show the splash screen that says where the data document resides. word appears not to be working but it is creating a new doc every time the short cut is clicked. I then have to restart word before it behaves again. Even when the word icon on the task bar is clicked word opens with the document title Doc 5 or 6 or 7 etc. etc. meaning it has opened the template but not shown the splash screen to allow connection to the database.

This excepted word and the mail merger works perfectly

hi pnjcarter,

As a rule, mailmerge main documents shouldn't be stored as templates, since running the merge doesn't impact the underlying document. Besides, you probably don't want or need a new mailmerge main document being created every time you want to merge. If you just use the mailmerge main document as a mailmerge main document, rather than using a template, that may be sufficient to resolve your problems.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]