MailMerge DDE connection

[jsolutions]

I am launching a Mailmerge document from Access and am specifying a new datasource for the document. When I do this, the mailmerge document launches another instance of Access with for the DDE.

Question :

Is there a way to indicate to Access (or Word) to use the current instance of Access for the DDE?

 

[RobCPA]

I've noticed the same thing when the mail-merge data source is an Access database, which was causing a problem due to rerunning an autoexec macro that ran when opening the secondary instance. I don't believe that there is a way to indicate the use of the primary instance.

I've recently changed my approach by exporting the Access data to Excel, and using Excel as the data source for the mail merge. This eliminates the opening of the second instance of Access, and it enhances the speed performance of the mail merge.

 

[rookery]

I dont know if this will help guys but in the past, when I was doing MailMerges using the current database as the source, I too was experiencing the problem of another instance of Access opening.

The solution was fairly simple. Just go into Tools -> StartUp and erase whatever is in the application title field. Annoying as your app no longer has a title but worked for me!

NSS

 

[mackers2]

This has bugged me as well, and what I did was separate out the data for the merge into a different database and then used that database as the source for the mailmerge document, but using ODBC. This works fine - Access never opens and the Word document closes clean, and feels much faster. Not sure if you have to do both to avoid Access opening.
Regards
Alasdair

 

[RobCPA]

rookery and mackers2 were both right. I just found the related article on Microsoft Knowledge base that gave those solutions, along with another one.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;199963