An appeal to a highly-knowledgeable MS Word 2002 guru:

I need to regularly create form letters to send to customers.
My data source for the merge is an Excel 2002 spreadsheet.
Within the data source, there are 51 referenced fields.

Below is a description of the procedure I follow:
1) I start up the mail merge wizard by bringing up a predefinied fax
template.
2) I go to Tools -> Letters and Mailings -> Mail Merge Wizard
3) When prompted, I select *Letters* then *use the current document*
then the *Edit Recipient List* link. The "Mail Merge Recipients"
Dialog box comes up.

Within this dialog, MS Word appears to have "locked" the default order
in which the columns are displayed, starting (from left to right) as
Last Name, First Name, Title, Company Name. These columns *are* able
to be repositioned by method of dragging and dropping, however, their
order is immediately reset the next time this dialog is accessed. The
column that I need moved over to the far left (permanently) is the 8th
column, and a scroll away - it starts to get painful when I need to
reference this column up to 20 times in an hour.

I have tried to change the data source to sort by this column (called
"Ref Number") however, after saving both documents and closing their
applications and reopening them, it doesn't change the order of these
columns (from Last Name, First Name, etc.).

Can anybody please tell me how I can "fix" this order to reflect the
data source (if it can be done)? I've trawled both the Microsoft
online KB and Google groups to no avail.

Many thanks in advance!!

- Dave