Thanks for the reply macropod, I'm not sure how I'm supposed to use those commands to bypass the problem though? It seems to be the case that Word simply can't use a query without parameters that were already set in Access. It consistently fails to make the 'initial link' between the query and the document, regardless of how I begin the merge. Unless I set definate paramters in the Access query.

Just to offer a little more information, the query is a simple one: Each person on the database is assigned a contact group. The Query has one parameter, the contact group, and so the mail merge is sent to everyone in the selected group. What I would like is a way for the user to set the contact group the query is using without the need to teach her to use the query design. The normal methods of doing this though [such as user defined criteria] , seem to make the query incompatible with a mail merge.