How to filter on a date field during mail merge
 

I'm trying to mail merge a Word 97 doc with Excel 97 spreadsheet that
contains a column formatted as a date. I'd like to filter the mail merge
(query definition) such that only records with a date that is within 45 days
of "today" get included in the merge. I've set the query filter to
"Expiration_Date" "Less than or equal to""=TODAY()+45" but I don't get any
records eventhough there most definitely are pertinent records in the source.
I can't find much help on appropriate syntax for the filter specification
and suspect I've got it wrong. Can anybody help?