Could it be that instead of being an issue of Word 2000 vs. Word 97, it is an issue of what separator is defined in the Control Panel? That might be the List Separator option.

>I am working with some office automation. I am having no problem with I want to do there, but the problem is actually in office itself. I am creating tables for data from VFP, copy them to the local machine as CSV (comma delimited text files). I have a default directory with form letters saved in template format (.dot) which have merge fields linked to the .csv file located locally. The problem I am having is when I save the template form document in Office 2000's word, it errors out in Office 97, but works fine in 2000. The thing is it does the opposite as well, if I save them in Office 97's word, it works fine on all 97 machines, but errors out on Office 2000 machines. The error that occurs is it doesn't recognize the commas in the comma delimited csv file and wants to think that all the fields (headers) in the text file are one big field. We have mostly office 97 workstations, but we also have some with Office 2000 installed as well. Is there any way to get past this
>compatibility issue and get these template (.dot) files to merge with the data source ok for both versions?