Using Excel for Mail Merge with Publisher 2000

[Ed Edler]

We have been using Excel spreadsheets as the Mail merge format in the User Setup option for several mail merge applications using Word 2000 without incident even though the mail merge file is an Excel 2.0 file.

We now have a need to do a mail merge for our monthly newsletter using Publisher 2000 which will only accept Excel versions 3.0 through 8.0. Is there a way to change the mail merge Excel version?

Right now I see we have three options:

1. Changing our user preference to either comma separated values or dbase for this monthly application and changing back for the other applications,

2. Changing the other applications to either comma separated values or dbase format,

3. Opening the Excel mail merge file after it is created and saving it in the latest format before using it with Publisher.

Since the Export Data function provides a choice of either Excel 2.0 or 5.0 I am hoping there might be a way to save the Excel mail merge file as an Excel 5.0 file.

Any ideas or additional options will be appreciated.