The limit of 63 fields only really applies if your data source is a Word
table, because they cannot have more than 63 columns.
Generally speaking if your data source is a text file, you can have far more
columns (I do not think that there is a published limit, but there are
people with over 1000. That said, the larger and more complex the file gets,
the less likely Word is to recognise the file format easily, and at that
point, people sometimes have to choose another format). So if you're just
adding a few, you should be OK for a long time yet.
Things have changed a bit in Word 2002/2003 but mainly it's to do with the
default method that Word uses to open text and other files. If you have
problems in those versions of Word, the first thing to try is to check Word
Tools|Options|General|"Confirm conversion at Open", then re-connect to your
data source. You should see an additional box that lets you select the
connection method. But if you need to be sure that /your/ application will
work on Word 2002/2003, there's really only one way and that's to try it
with that version.
Peter Jamieson