I am running Word and Excel 2002 on a Windows XP machine.

I'm using a table in Excel for a mail merge into Word. I
open Excel then Word. (If I open Word first it says the
excel file is locked for editing.) Word updates the
information for the mail merge. Even if I close them
right after I open them it still keeps Excel in processes
in the task manager. It does not matter the order I close
them in. It seems, for some reason, that the link to make
the mail merge is keeping excel open. Thank you.

Johnny