This type of problem has traditionally occurred in some cases,
especially when the data source is Excel or Access, but I don't think it
is common when the data source is a Word table.

However, I'm not actively using Office 2003 much now so it's also
possible that an update has changed its behaviour a bit.

But
a. are you experiencing this with Word data sources, or just the
Excel/Access ones?
b. is there a VBA macro in your document/template that might run when
you close your document, e.g. an Autoclose macro?
c. do your data sources have long pathnames? If so, can you try
experimenting with a data source with a short pathname? Or are they on
network drives?
d. when you re-open your mailmerge main document, try
- re-attaching the data source in the usual way, to get you through
the dialogs
- then enable the Mailmerge toolbar (View-Toolbars) if it isn't
enabled already
- then use the 2nd button to change the mail merge main document
type back to "Normal Word Document"
- now go through the process of connecting to the data source again
- save and close the document
- re-open and see if anything has changed


Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Jan wrote:
I am using MSWord 2003 and I use Word tables and Excel spreadsheets for data
files. I also use Access queries etc.

"Peter Jamieson" wrote:

Which version of Word? What is the data source?

Peter Jamieson

http://tips.pjmsn.me.uk

Jan wrote:
Everytime I close a main merge file, I lose the connection to the data.