Paul,
I'm not entirely sure I've understood your problem correctly but..
When I Merge with a word document I use a local database and table that holds just the data to be merged. That way you don't get the file in use error and reports a pre-processed in VF and just the result is merged into Word.

HTH - Sorry if I've got the wrong end of the stick.
Caroline


>I am looking for an alternative that allows merging from word 97 to a vfp 6.0 database. i do not like msquery as the limit of 255 characters is too easy to use up. right now, i merge the vfp data into excel using msquery, and then merge the word 97 document to the excel document (excel has no limit of 255 characters as does word). unfortunately, this takes a while to take place.
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>i have also selected the merge information from the database table into a free table, and then merge into this free table using the VFP foxpro driver. unfortunately, in a multiuser environment, this doesn't work well as anytime this select statement is utilized (ie select ... from table into table table name), another user cannot run the same program (receive error "file is in use").
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>Any help (even third party recommendations) will be appreciated. thank you.