Yes, it's a pain - although I know for a fact that this problem has been
reported, and I believe it was fixed in Word 2003,  I do not think it has
been fixed in any of the XP service packs. Nor do I know of any workaround,
let alone a simple one. As long as the merge documents are completely
predefined by the IT people, I suppose your best option is to set up the
data source and any necessary filters using an AutoOpen macro, and never let
the user overwrite the original document. If the user need to be able to
save the sorts/filters he/she has imposed, I suspect the only option would
be to run a macro (perhaps an Autoclose macro, though I never feel
particularly comfortable with those) that captures the current querystring,
saves it (e.g. in a document variable), then removes it. Then have an
AutoOpen that re-establishes the sort/filter criteria. But I suspect that
even if that is theoretically feasible it falls foul of another unfixed
error whereby trying to get the value of Querystring causes an error in Word
XP. The only way I know to find that Querystring is to save the document as
a web page, then go and inspect the HTML.Not my idea of a robust solution,
either.

Best I can do I'm afraid.

Peter Jamieson