Mail Merge in Microsoft Word 2003

Mail Merge is useful when you want to send mass mailings but with each letter having a personal look. This could be used for cover letters when applying for a job, soliciting for a charity, mass marketing, or sending letters to politicians.

The process involves creation of a main document and a data source, and merging values from the data source into the main document. This can be carried out using the Mail Merge task pane or the Mail Merge toolbar. The Mail Merge Task Pane operates like a wizard, guiding you through the process. The first step is to create the main document. The task pane has 5 choices: letters, e-mail messages, envelopes, labels, and directory.

In creating a letter, you have three choices:

· Use the current document – start from the current document, adding recipient info using the Mail Merge wizard

· Start from a template – use a mail merge template as a starting point

· Start from an existing mail merge document – modify to revise content or recipients

If you are using a template, you can choose from Elegant, Professional, Contemporary, or Plain. A template has “placeholders” for various normal aspects of the item being created (in this case a letter). The placeholders have dummy content (e.g. click here to type body). Some of the placeholders have << stuff >> which are places where data will be merged in from the data source. Type in your letter, but leave << >>’s alone.

In the task pane, if you choose Next to enter recipients, you have a choice to

· Use an existing list

· Use Outlook contacts

· Type a new list – this choice leads you to a window that allows you to type in a bunch of stereotypical contact info (name,  address, phone, e-mail, etc). You can modify the set of info (add, remove, etc). Before saving, you will be asked to specify the file name, and be given a chance to sort or filter data.

Existing lists can be a file (Word, Excel, …) or database

Some key terms are needed for talking about data sources. Data will be stored in a table-like format (in fact, it can be stored in Word tables).

· Each row is a record

· The first row is the header record – it shows the name of each column

· Each other row is a data record – it includes the data that will be merged into the document.

· Each column is called a data field, which is identified with a field name (name of the column). Field names must be unique. The order of fields is not important.

After creating your data, the next step on the task pane is to take another crack at writing the letter. You can choose from stereotypical merge fields (pretty nice and friendly) or create your own specific merge field.

Next, you can preview your letters, then assuming that everything came out ok, complete the merge, printing the letters, a range of letters, or editing individual letters.

You can put conditions into the letter. Choose Insert Word Field from Mail Merge Toolbar, and choose If …Then…Else. Then fill in the dialog box for the condition and the “true text” and “false text”.

To select records to merge based on a condition, choose the Mail Merge Recipients button on the Mail Merge toolbar. Click the arrow to the left of the field you want to select based on, and choose the value to use. (you can also choose “blanks”, “non blanks”).

All of these things can be done using the Mail Merge toolbar as well.

The same capabilities can be used to create mailing labels. When creating the main document, choose labels instead of letter. Choose label options in step 2 (select brand and model of the labels to be used).