>WHAT I WANT: (BUT DON'T KNOW AN EASY WAY TO ACCOMPLISH)
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>What I would like is to do a little proactive programmatic checking for consistencies between the word document and the excel data. The names of the excel fields is a piece of cake since it is coming from the database, But I am not sure what the easiest way would be to get the merge fields names from the word document.
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>If I could figure out a way to access the word document BEFORE I attempt to merge the data to see what fields it is expecting. The template is a normal word document at the point where I want to "read" the merge fields just prior to setting the datasource. Being a normal document object, I am not expecting that I will be able to find any document object properties that will help me out, but let me know if you know of one I don't.
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>CURRENT PLAN:
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>I have considered reading the word document as a text string and parsing out all the merge fields, I am just trying to think if there is any easier or faster way, currently this is my projected course of action.
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You can open the Word document with Automation and cycle through the merge fields, using the MailMergeFields collection.

A better course of action, if you can control document creation, is to set up the document with the appropriate list of fields (using a MailMerge header source), so the user can pick the fields from the list of what will actually be available.

Tamar