There are many threads that skirt arond my issue, but I wasn't able to find
an answer that appeared to circumvent my issue:

We are using Word 2000 and Access 97 on our machines at work.  Have a Word
document that mailmerges with an Access query that worked when all MS Office
apps were Office 97. When I try to open the document now (with Access 8976
and Word 2000), I get the messge that Word could not re-establish a DDE
connection to Microsoft Access to complete the current task.  I have attempte
to "find the data source" numerous times, but DDE is not an option when I'm
trying to reconnect (and that seems to be key to many other posters'
problems), so I've been unsuccessful at re-attacehing the Access query.  I
checked "Confirm conversion at Open," but still cannot find DDE as an option
when attempting to find the data source.  The Word file works fine on my
machine at home running Access 2003 and Word 2003.

Any guidance, o, sage ones?