Unfortunately, DDE does not let you access the 2nd worksheet.
I tried a (very) simple experiment using your formula and an OLEDB
connection and had no problems and wondered
a. what problem you were seeing
b. whether it makes any difference if the Excel column's cell formats are
set to "Text"
The only other idea is essentially to freeze the column values before
merging (one way would be to use Save As to save a copy of the spreadsheet,
select the column, then use Edit|Copy, Edit|Paste Special and select
Paste|Values. If you still find that you need to use DDE, you could freeze
the whole sheet, remove all the other sheets, and mergefrom that). A pain,
but perhaps less painful than other approaches.

Signature
Peter Jamieson
> Hello,
>
[quoted text clipped - 23 lines]
>
> Lisa