Mail Merge

Introduction

Mail Merge can be used to mass-produce letters to taxpayers, vendors, users, employees or clients. To create a merge, you modify a form document and then merge it with a data source created from the database. The merge reproduces copies of the form document. Each copy contains specific information from a record in the data source.

For example, to write the same letter to a number of people without typing the original letter more than once, you can create a form document (letter) and merge it with a data file or Address Book. This creates a letter for each person on your mailing list. The text of the letter is the same on each copy, but the names and addresses are different.

You can have the merged letters open in a third document window or go directly to your printer or e-mail. Below are a picture of what a typical mail merge main document for a form letter looks like and a table of common commands used in merging documents. As well, there are instructions on how to create a merge document and on how to restrict the data.

 

 

August 5, 2009

<<Address>>
<<CityProvince>> <<PostalCode>>

Dear <<Name>>:

Below is the statement of the current status of your account.

Microsoft Word Mail Merge Tools

Tool

Action

 

Main document setup

 

Open Data Source

 

Mail merge recipients (filtering the data)

 

Insert a field from the data document into the master document

 

Insert a built-in Microsoft Word field

 

View merged data / field names toggle

 

When in merged data view, use these to move through the records

 

Mail Merge - choose between new document, printer, fax or e-mail

 

Check for errors

 

Merge to new document

 

Merge to printer

 

Merge to E-mail

 

Merge to Fax

Creating a Merge Document

To make a mail merge, using the above tools, start off in your word processor. While the instructions below are for Microsoft Word 2003, other word processors should have similar tools. Once your word processor is up, follow these steps:

  1. Go to Tools -> Letters and Mailings -> Show Merge Tools. If you do not wish to do a letter type of merge then you will need to use the Main document setup tool to determine the document type.
  2. Click the Open Data Source tool, find the Access database or mail merge data file. If you select a database, then a form similar to the one below will appear.


  3. Choose which table or query to use in the mail merge.
  4. Click the OK button.
     

Restricting the Data

If you do not want to show all records, then you can filter out the ones you want using the Mail merge recipients tool. Clicking it will show a screen similar to the one below.

Next, click on the down arrow beside one of the column names. In the picture on the right, the down arrow beside EmailAddress was clicked. Navigate down to Advanced and click or press the enter key. The Filter and Sort screen shown below will then appear.

It takes time to get used to the Filter and Sort form. The picture below shows one way of restricting the mailout to only those that have area codes that begin with the letter P. It also stipulates that the EmailAddress field must contain data.

 
[Mail Merge] [Email]