Word Mail Merge - Won't Read Excel Spreadsheet

[helponmac]

I am trying to do a mail merge in Word using an Excel spreadsheet. I have done mail merges many times before and was quite frustrated when it wouldn't work this time.

I have Mac Office V.X

I have set up my template in Word and can successfully make this my form letter. By this I mean that in the Data Merge Manager, under Main Document, I can create a form letter.

Step two of merging a document is Data Merge Manager, then choosing Data Source/Get Data/Open Data Source... The problem is that I can choose my Excel file but Word won't open it. Word asks me to convert the file from Text Only, MS-DOS Text, RTF, HTML, or Unicode Text. I don't figure any of those help me.

One of the ways of getting around this problem is to copy the Excel spreadsheet to Word as a table. HOWEVER, I have some fields in Excel that are blank and when I copy them to Word, they don't stay as a separate box (they merge with the box next to them) meaning that I have to then format the entire table in Word which is too time-consuming since my table is very large.

How can I get Word to be able to read an Excel file? Do any of you know why this would happen?