Thanks to your suggestion I found the command and property to remove the link to the template. And that really solved my problem.

I would be interessted in why it is behaving different on two machines with both having the same Word version. But that is a more academic interest. ;-)

Thank you again!
Gerhard

>>Update:
>>
>>I found, that the problem is, that the original template is referenced in the resulting document. When I remove this information via File - Check Document in Word. I can load the merged document without error.
>>
>>Now my problem is: How can I remove the reference for the original template via automation?
>
>This is a good case for recording a macro when you do it interactively to see what PEMs are involved. Then, write better code than the macro.
>
>Tamar