Office 2003 won't merge from Access 2 based program

[ITJRW]

I am trying to help a prosecutors office with a problem merging documents
that worked prior to installation of Office 2003 and Windows XP. This is a
very legacy application and the developer refuses to try to fix the problem.
The application was written in VB 4 and uses Access 2 databases. The
merging attempts give the following errors:

"Merge Errror (Word) #1056 (0)" on title bar of error message and message is
"Not a valid filename."
The file name is valid and the permissions have been checked. That is
users can open the master merge document and it's associated recordless
header file (.dat) for field selection.

"31031 (0)" on title bar and message "Invalid source for link"

31004 (0) on title bar and message "No object"

This merge is fine on Windows 98 and using Word 97.

What is happening here? I there a way to correct the problem. The data is
taken from multiple tables in the .mdb file and uses a fairly complex SQL
statement to retrieve the record data.

Could I create a named data source for these merge documents and obtain the
data (from these multiple tables) using the newer Jet versions or OLE? How
would I go about that?

Thanks,
Justice

 

[garfield-n-odie]

Is the Access 2 converter installed? See
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=826507 "Supported data sources for
importing, for exporting, and for linking in a Microsoft Office Access
2003 database" for more information.

 

[ITJRW]

I'm pretty sure it is not. They do not have Access 2003 in their Office
product (must be standard). Would that affect Word's ability to open the
data or the Access 2-VB4 based application to open the Word document or
create a Word .dat file with the result of the query in the app. What
you're asking makes some sense to me. I have the full Office 2003 package
and I was told I'd need to download the Access 2 converter to open the files
in Access 11. Didn't consider that Word 11 might need to have this to
interface as well.

 

[ITJRW]

I downloaded the Access 2 converter and installed it but this did not make a
difference. I did some more investigation and found that the .dat file is
being created with the appropriate information from the Access tables. It
is, however, naming them with the short filename form (includes ~ in the
filename). When I replaced the current .dat file with the created one, I
got a proper merge.

This is a work around which can buy me some time but I would like to figure
out what is actually causing the "not valid filename" ie, is the not valid
name due to the short filename form, is the file with the bad name the .dat
file or the main merge file. I can open the master merge document and
associate the .dat file with the document and get a good merge.

Any other suggestions?
ITJRW