Mail Merge Issue - Excel 2007 to Word 2007

Hi all...

I am attempting to complete a mail merge with currency data in Excel. We are mailing letters out to individuals stating they have checks that have not yet been cashed, even though they are way past the "stale" date...and then we can get them off of our bank reconciliation.

The problem is this: when providing information as to the check number, check date, and check amount, the formatting transfers from Excel into Word differently than expected. I've tried a few different things, including ensuring the values are in the same font, and that the dollar amount field is set up as follows: Accounting, 2 decimal points, and $ currency sign displaying. This wasn't working, so I reviewed the help document in Word, and it says to do the following:
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Before you connect to the worksheet, do the following in Word:
Click the Microsoft Office Button , and then click Word Options.
Click Advanced.
Scroll to the General section, and select the Confirm file format conversion on open check box.
Click OK.
With the mail merge main document open, in the Start Mail Merge group of the Mailings tab, click Select Recipients, and then click Use Existing List.
Locate the Excel worksheet in the Select Data Source dialog box, and double-click it.
In the Confirm Data Source dialog box, click MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls), and then click OK.
Note If you don't see MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls), select the Show all check box.
In the Microsoft Office Excel dialog box, for Named or cell range, select the cell range or worksheet that contains the information that you want to merge, and then click OK.
Note To prevent being prompted every time you open a data file, you can turn off the Confirm conversion at Open option after you have connected to the worksheet.
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Of course, I saw this after I'd linked the documents so I don't know if that's the problem - if it is the problem, how can I break the link? I know how to break links in Excel but I don't see an option to do that in Word. Also, I notice in the MS Excel Worksheets via DDE (*.xls) the file extension is not the same as the 2007 (*.xlsx) format and there is no selection for that. I also don't know if that is causing issues.

In any event, I'm getting the two following error messages.

In Excel 2007:

The document path is listed, and then "is currently in use. Try again later."

In Word 2007

"Word could not establish a connection to Microsoft Excel to complete the current task."

So, my formatting isn't preserved and I'd really rather not have to peruse 304 documents for appropriate decimal / currency formatting!

If anyone could help I would be extremely appreciative.

Thanks, JBG

I'm still digging for this answer and really would be able to use some help today...thanks for bearing with my impatience!

JBG