I have several documents in Word 2010 that contain merge fields from access. Usually, when I try yto use these documenst I have no problems, irrespective of which applications I have open. Sometimes, however, if I have both Word and Access open at the same time I get the message "Error has occurred: The database has been placed in a state by user 'Admin' on machine 'xxxxxxxxx' that prevents it from being opened or locked.", and I am unable to complete the merge. This can happen either when I try to run the associated query in Access, or when I try to open the merge document in Word. The problem also seems to be independent of whether either or both files were created in Office 2010, or a previous version. Can anyone solve this please

Hi Kevin

I understand this depends on whether you have Access configured with the default open mode set to shared and default record locking set to locks or no locks. I'm not familiar with Access's workings in this area, so I can't tell you for sure which combo is required.

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

Thanks Paul. Sorry it's taken me so long to acknowledge your reply, but I have been away for a while. At least I know where to look now, so I'll experiment with various combinations