Choosing Directory merge was the right move, but you also have to ensure
that there are no surplus paragraph marks at the end of your Word Mail Merge
Main Document. You should just have a single table row, and whatever
paragrpah marks Word insists on - delete any others.

You can also consider inserting your Excel data as a DATABASE - if you
enable the database toolbar in Word (View Toolbars) and locate and click the
Insert Database button, you will see that you can select a data source,
select columns, define select/sort criteria, and so on). You can either
insert the data as a DATABASE field, which you can then re-execute, or as
plain text in a table (if there are more columns than WOrd can handle, Word
inserts the data as delimited text.).

You would probably have to format the data how you want it post-insertion,
and the DATABASE insertion process can sometimes fail to insert a DATABASE
field that actually works when you re-execute it, so I wouldn't try too hard
to make it all work unless it suits your purpose, but just thought I'd
mention it.

Peter Jamieson