Dynamic Data Exchange failure

Try using the default OLE DB Database Files method of connection to the data source.

DDE is old technology that involves opening the workbook and that can fail if you have Excel open and were taking an action in Excel that was not complete - such as editing a formula.

However, if you are wedded to DDE, make sure that in Excel, under File>Options>Advanced>General, there is no tick in the box for "Ignore other applications that use Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)".

Doug - Thank you for your reply.  Unfortunately, neither solution solves the problem that is hindering my efforts in preparing labels using the MS Word Mail Merge function.

I wanted to use DDE because in the help dialog provided it suggests the use of this technology if you want to bring the formatting from MS Excel into the merged labels.  (One of the merge fields is formatted as "currency" and I wanted the $ sign to be included.)  I tried the DDE again using your suggestion but it gave me the same "Something Went Wrong" message.

Then I tried the OLE DB Files method and while it brought over the information from the MS Excel spreadsheet it was converted to the default formatting of the MS Word document.  I also tried the suggestion of converting the formatting in the MS Excel spreadsheet to "Text" but that removed the $ sign from the entries in MS Excel. 

I finally solved the issue in a more simplistic but less desirable way.  I changed the formatting of the merge fields in the MS Word document, AND manually added a $ sign to the text field in the MS Excel spreadsheet.  This was considerably more time consuming than was satisfactory to me.

Doesn't this really represent a "bug" that should be fixed?

Why do you have to continue to use DDE?  I cannot think of any good reason.

It is not only in 2013 that the workbook is opened if you use DDE.  That also happened with prior versions.