Pamela,
When I tried a MailMerge with my Office97, one of the choices for Data Source was MS FoxPro files (*.dbf) and another was dBase files (*.dbf). I presume they are dBase III+ and FP2.x files as the earlier versions of Word used.

If you don't have this, it is definitely a setup problem, as I had to click on these drivers as part of a custom install.

HTH
Barbara

>Hi Barbara,
>
>>I haven't done this with Office97, but with earlier versions all you had to do was run SETUP. In the Custom setup make sure the DBF data drivers are checked. They are NOT in the default setup in earlier Word versions, but had to be checked specifically.<
>
>That has worked for me in the past also, but something is different now. The new MS Data Access Components are evidently missing some backward compatibility. The FoxPro data driver options are greyed out in Office 97 Setup. At first I just got an error message that the old drivers were not supported, then the option disappeared altogether from my Word and Excel Open dialogs. I reran DataAccess.exe that ships with Office 97, but that doesn't seem to help either.
>
>I gather from a couple of other answers that MSDC 2.1 was rushed out the door a little early and some of the backward compatibility issues were not resolved. Anyway, I am going to keep squeaking until I get some oil.
>
>:-) Pamela