Note that the Word dialog listing the data in the source xls file continues
to display old information ( I removed the named range from the workbook,
dialog shows it as still present with a modified date of a couple of weeks
ago).

I wish to standardise on naming practices and leave original books/sheets
and ranges even when the data fields change. How do I break the connection to
the old data without changing filenames?

I suspect the best you can do is to go through the connection process
again - you will lose any filter/sort criteria though.

Peter Jamieson