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Hello pkhari:<br />
<br />
Thanks for the help, but, ultimately, the only solution was to uninstall/install MS Office. &nbsp;I awarded you points for participation.
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Hello pkhari:

Thanks for the help, but, ultimately, the only solution was to uninstall/install MS Office.  I awarded you points for participation.

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The PC owner regularly opens up a MS Word document that has a Excel spreadsheet merged to it. &nbsp;All of a sudden it now gets an error message &quot;Waiting for Microsoft Excel to accept DDE Commands&quot;. <br />
<br />
We renamed the xls file xxxxOLD and pasted a backup of the file to the directory but got the same error message.<br />
<br />
By the way, the backup file had not been updated for several months. &nbsp;The DDE error message originates from a Word file just a few days old.<br />
<br />
Any ideas?
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The PC owner regularly opens up a MS Word document that has a Excel spreadsheet merged to it.  All of a sudden it now gets an error message "Waiting for Microsoft Excel to accept DDE Commands". 

We renamed the xls file xxxxOLD and pasted a backup of the file to the directory but got the same error message.

By the way, the backup file had not been updated for several months.  The DDE error message originates from a Word file just a few days old.

Any ideas?

DDE waiting for Excel command in Word merge

The Microsoft Legacy Operating System topic includes legacy versions of Microsoft operating systems prior to Windows 2000: All versions of MS-DOS and other versions developed for specific manufacturers and Windows 3/3.1, Windows 95 and Windows 98, plus any other Windows-related versions, and Windows Mobile.

Microsoft Legacy OS

Microsoft Excel topics include formulas, formatting, VBA macros and user-defined functions, and everything else related to the spreadsheet user interface, including error messages.

Microsoft Excel

Microsoft Word is a commercial document editing program that is part of the Microsoft Office suite. It features numerous text-editing tools for creating richly formatted documents, along with tools for the use of macros in Word documents. Word's native file formats are denoted either by a .doc or .docx file extension. Plugins permitting the Windows versions of Word to read and write formats it does not natively support, such as the OpenDocument format (ODF) are available. Word can import and display images in common bitmap formats such as JPG and GIF. It can also be used to create and display simple line-art.