Word 97 opening Access 2000

[RS200Phil]

Hi,

As a developer, to support various clients and legacy systems, I have
Word 97 and 2000, and Access 2/95/97 and 2000 all installed on my Win
98se PC.

This has worked absolutely fine for years. However, tonight, when I
attempted a mailmerge with Word 97, it used Access 2000 to open an
Access 97 database. It has always correctly used Access 97 in the
past.

I believe this was probably caused by my having Access 2000 open (doing
something else) at the time, but after rebooting etc. Word 97 now
refuses to open Access 97, insisting on running 2000 every time.

I am sure this is just a registry setting - I don't fancy uninstalling
both, reinstalling and setting preferences and loading service packs.
Surely it's a one-liner?

Can anybody tell me what I need to change?
Thanks in anticipation.

Phil

 

[Peter Jamieson]

It may be a one-liner but at the moment I can't find it. Could it be in
WINWORD.INI? Suggestions:
a. ensure you do not have a PATH that has the Access 2000 .exe before the
Access 97 .exe. Sounds unlikely though.
b. try to reverse what has happened by doing exactly the same thing the
other way around, i.e. have Access 97 open then try to connect using DDE.

Peter Jamieson

 

[RS200Phil]

Thanks very much indeed for the suggestions, Peter. Sadly I had no joy
with these.

If in Word, you choose Tools / Mail Merge / Get Data then choose an
Access database as the datasource, it will open A2K. I reset the file
association, just in case, so if you click on the same MDB files in
Explorer it correctly uses A97. Word / merge still insists on A2K,
though. Aaargh!!!!

Unless I have (or receive!) any inspiration in the next couple of days
I'll just uninstall O'2K and re-establish the merge. I presume it will
then have to use O'97. Then I'll reinstall O2K again.

Sounds logical enough to me, but I'm really hoping to get to the bottom
of this...

Anyone else got any ideas?

Thanks again.