eg
     text could read         aa
                       or          ab
                       or          ac
and so on down to         az

bit map files could be on my c: drive

with diff names ie         aa.bmp
                                  ab.bmp and so on

so that when i run the macro it will replace the text aa with a bitmap
picture aa.bmp

help please as ive been trying for 6 months with no success

hth, Martin

'---
  Dim sName As String, sPath As String, sExt As String

  sExt = ".gif"
  sPath = "c:\"
  sName = Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.Text
  sName = Left(sName, Len(sName) - 1)

  ChangeFileOpenDirectory sPath

  If UCase(Dir(sName & sExt)) = UCase(sName & sExt) Then
      Selection.Paragraphs(1).Range.Delete
      Selection.InlineShapes.AddPicture FileName:=sPath & sName & sExt _
          , LinkToFile:=False, SaveWithDocument:=True
  End If
'---

says...

The best thing to do is store the path to the bitmap in a field in the data
source and then insert that mergefield inside an { INCLUDEPICTURE } field in
the mailmerge main document in place of the filename that you would normally
have in such a field.

Then when you execute the mailmerge, and select the whole document and press
F9 to update all of the fields in the output, the respective bitmaps will
appear along with the other data for each record.

BTW, it's best to put the subject of your question as the Subject of your
post.

Please post any follow-up or new questions to the Newsgroups so that others
may benefit therefrom or contribute thereto.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP