I would like suggestions on how to acheive the following: I need to send a personalized contract, many times a day, to many clients by fax using WinFax Pro 8. The contrats are in Word 97 format. The list of clients to contact are stored in a VFP 5 table and is generated before starting the merge process.

This is an automatic process that need to run without any user intervention. I will develop an application that will start a method every hour (using a timer). The method will scan the main table for new contrat to send. It will create the table for the mail merge and will start the merge in Word 97. The resulting contracts are to be faxed to the client.

What's the best solution?
- Write a VBA macro in Word 97 to scan the document for information to send to WinFax, like the macro that came with WinFax. BTW, I never got the macro to work the way I want, it allways pop up some forms on screen, wich is unacceptable in a automatize process. Also, I have some experience with VB, not with VBA
- For each contract: create one record in the merge table, send the DDE command to WinFax to set the fax number, start Word, set the default printer to WinFax, start the merge, print the file
- I have an ActiveX control named WinFax SDK, but get the message "Control not registered" when trying to put it on a form. Somebody know the name of the file to register?

What's your pick? VBA, DDE and/or ActiveX?

TIA for your input