I have created a SP list that feeds an excel spreadsheet.

I have created a mail merge in a word document to get the data from the excel Spreadsheet.

Once the odc file is in C:\Users\username\Documents\My Data Sources of all people involved, on my laptop the connection always works. On other people it works the first time, but the second, it loses the 'connection' and displays a dialogue box called 'my data link properties' where the 'properties' are all correct but after pressing ok, the error messages keep on popping up, making the mail merge impossible.

On my computer, it works, but still everytime I need to re-select the odc file. Is it normal that it keeps on asking for it?

Hi suxxxann,

Based on your description, the file works fine in your computer, and other users can use this file at first time then cant connect to data any more. And you also wonder to know if you need to re-select the odc file every time.

For your issue 1, I suggest you try to have a test with one user computer to check if your issue is caused by the username in odc file. For example we select an users computer and the computer name is user1.

1. Copy the odc file from your computer to user1s computer in C:\Users\user1\Documents\My Data Sources
2. Right click the odc file and find SourceFile change the user name to user1 (As shown in the following figure).

  3. Then resave the file and check if it works fine now in user1s computer.

For your issue 2, I test it in my own environment and I also need to re-select the odc file every time. I suppose this behavior might be by design.

Please try this method and check if it works for you. Im glad to help you.

Hope its helpful.

Regards,

There are some differences from what you are showing.

My connection is ODBC

  <odc:Connection odc:Type="ODBC">

And among the lines I do not have the odc:source file

My file is NOT positioned on a specific computer. It is stored in a document library  in SP, therefore the path is equal to everybody.