Creating MS SQL queries that can be merged into MS Word documents...a newbies question ;)

Hi this is a real newbies question.

At the school where I work at we have had an MIS database system
installed that sits on top of MS SQL server.  Getting printed outputs
from this system is a real problem and I was going to try to link the
MS SQL tables to an Access project so that I could create some queries
in access that could be merged into some word documents.  This short
term solution has not worked because I keep getting a connection error
when I try to link to the MS SQL database.

It must be possible to do this so where do I start ?  What tools do I
use ? What documentation books or web sites do  I need to refer to ?

heeeelp please !!! ;)

Richard Finnigan
St John's School
Northwood