I have word 2003 and Outlook 2003.  Using the mailmerge wizard I got to step
3 of 6   Choose Contacts Folder. When I clicked it I got the message "unable
to obtain list of tables from the data source."   I could not find any help
in MS products on how to make the contacts folder the data source so I went
to google.

I googled:  "unable to obtain list of tables from the data source" that
phrase and found that quite a number of people have had this same problem.
Apparently there is some sort of check box associated with Contacts which
must be checked before the Contacts list can handshake with a mail merge.  I
have not been able to find out how to do it.