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How do you debug xls files for DDE link with Word?

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by geoff.harwood

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I have clean installed XP 2. Installed and removed Word 2002 and Excel 2003. Now have only Office 97 and I still can't run a merge document with my old xls files (which are quite large). Word says it cannot re-establish DDE link with Excel. I can get it to work by copying a small segment of xls to a new file but need to be able to use the larger files. Does anyone have a simple solution?

3 replies

by atcollege

This may work. Update Office and Windows completely.
In Word, have you turned on Confirm Conversion on Open?
Tools, Options...General tab, check Confirm Conversion on Open.
When you select the recipient list, it should give you 3 connection types. One of which is DDE.

In Excel, the list you are using should be on the first sheet.

by geoff.harwood

Hi AtCollege
Many thanks. Yes I have tried all you suggested to no avail. But found a sort of solution by transferring a large part of my database onto sheet2 - leaving a much smaller amount of data on sheet 1 which works in a mail merge. It seems that my problem was purely the amount of data the dde link is trying to access and it just can't cope.

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