title: What's the easiest way to MailMerge MS Word to MS SQL Server using VBA code?
body: <p>Why doesn't MS Word just use a Connection String and SQL statement like every other platform on the planet?</p>
  <p>There are pretty standard connection strings to be used to connect to any database whether it's Access, MS Sql, MySql, etc. Whether you're coming from Ado in prehistoric VB, or ADO.net or EF, or Java, or Python, or PHP, etc. It's always the same. One simple Connection String, then the SQL to be executed. Why is MS Word that much different?</p>
  <p>I've had an Access front end to a SQL backend running for 20 years. One of its functions sets up a Word Document with a MailMerge bound back to the Access front end. The upgrade to Office 11 (or whatever the latest upgrade was) made that function start throwing an exception &quot;Datasource placed in a state by admin&quot;. The only fix was to massage the <code>ActiveDocument.MailMerge.OpenDataSource</code> method so that it now uses DDE to connect to the access database. The issue is that it freezes the computer for about 90 seconds.</p>
  <p>I'm thinking that it might just be simpler to point the MailMerge directly as the SQL backend. Any help would be appreciated.</p>