Mailmerge - Need to restart entire system to see changes

[Dzeni]

Help!! I have know how to mailmerge using OOo. I have the document template in writer and the data source in the spreadsheet. When I change something in my datasource, it does not show up when I try and complete the merge unless I restart my entire system first.

I tried saving the spreadsheet, changes did not show up in mail merge.
So I closed down the spreadsheet. Still no luck
So I closed down the writer and then opened it again and tried to merge. Still had the old (and now incorrect data showing)
Finally restarted my system, then tried opening writer and voila, it worked.

But my question is Why?? And is there an easier way of doing this? Hate that I have to restart my machine to see reflected changes. Is most annoying.

Any suggestions deeply appreciated.

Thanks

Dzeni

[JohnV]

This is a known shortcoming of using a Spreadsheet as a data source. If you don't need formulas in your data source then open it in Calc and save to dBase format. Register the dBase file directory as your data source. This will automatically update if altered in Calc or directly from Writer's database explorer view.

If you need formulas then you will need to do all alterations in Calc then resave to dBAse. Here's a macro to do this automatically. http://www.oooforum.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3825

[Dzeni]

Thanks for that. Great to know that the solution is relatively simple