Which version of Word are you using? If it is Word 2002/2003 and you created
your data source within Word, Word always uses an Access .mdb format file to
store the data. You can't just open that data file and look at the contents
in Word (although you can do it using the Mail Merge Recipients dialog).

If you want your data to be more directly readable, you can create a data
source manually using Notepad, or Word. Ask again if you need help on how to
do that.

Or is it a different problem?

Peter Jamieson