I am quite unable to correlate your document with the Excel workbooks you attached to post #1. There are numerous field references that relate to neither workbook. Moreover, your DATABASE field depiction is still trying to reference an Access database instead of your 'Source 2 - Excel data' workbook and refers to multiple fields that don't exist in that workbook.

You're really not helping anyone resolve your problem.

Try the following DATABASE field representation, which references your 'Source 2 - Excel data' workbook. It is assumed your mailmerge main document and the workbook are stored in the same folder.

{DATABASE \d "{FILELAME \p}/../Source 2 - Excel data.xlsx" \s "SELECT `Email`, `Name`, `Q1 Y/N`, `Q2 Text`, `Hire Reference` FROM [Form1$] WHERE {={ MERGEFIELD Hire_Reference} \# 0} = `Hire Reference`" \l "23" \b "47" \h}

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