Choose Your Data Source

  1. Start Microsoft Word and open a new document, or if you have a form letter already prepared, open that document.
  2. Click Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge. If your Microsoft Office menus are set to Show recently used commands first, you may need to click the expansion arrows at the bottom of the Tools menu to see the Letters and Mailings option. The Mail Merge task pane appears.
  3. Select the Letters radio button, then click Next at the bottom of the pane.
  4. Click Use the current document, then click Next.
  5. Click Use an existing list, then click Browse. The Select Data Source dialog box appears.
  6. From this dialog box, click Tools > MS Query. For this exercise, uncheck the Use the Query Wizard check box if it is checked. If you don't have an MS Query option, you need to install MS Query on your machine. This starts Microsoft Query and opens the Choose Data Source dialog box.
  7. In the Choose Data Source dialog box, click the data source name (DSN) that corresponds to the data source you want to access and click OK.
    If you don't see your DSN listed, do one of the following:
    • Click Browse and navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\odbc\DataSources, then double-click the name of your DSN. This adds the DSN to the list.
    • Click Options and type the path to the directory containing your DSN, then click Add. Now the contents of that directory will be listed. For more information, see the Microsoft Query documentation.
    Note: See Setting Up DSNs on the Client for instructions on creating DSNs.
  8. If you or an administrator established database security methods during AcuXDBC setup, the AcuXDBC login dialog box appears; type a valid User ID and Password, and click OK.
    Tip: You can display just the tables of a given user by selecting from the owner drop-down list. For example, you could display only the tables that belong to PUBLIC by choosing PUBLIC from the drop-down list.
    The Add Tables dialog box appears.

    If no security methods have been established, a User ID and Password are not required and the Login dialog box will not appear.

Parent topic: Accessing Data From Word 2003