I'm writing an application that I intend to build as an EXE for distribution. One of the functions of this app is that it automates a MailMerge with Word7. The question is: what's the best data source to use in a mail merge? The options appear to be limited to just 4; text file, Excel file, Word document, or an ODBC data source.

I've implemented the text file approach which works well except an annoying Word dialog appears asking the user to provide the file's field and record delimiters and I've not found away to get around this. The Excel file approach I guess could be accomplished by issuing a VFP command COPY TO filename TYPE XLS. But Word opens Excel when doing the merge. I don't want to have to require that Excel be installed on the computer. Creating a second word document with just the data fields from my VFP table apparently could be used but that seems like a slow and round-about way. That leaves ODBC. Can the VFP ODBC drivers be distributed? And if so, how can i programatically install the drivers and create the ODBC datasources the first time the user attempts to do a mail merge?