HOW TO MAIL MERGE

AN INFORMATIVE SLIDESHOW PRESENTATION…..

WHAT IS MAIL MERGING?

Mail merging is when you combine a data set (The recipients of your letter) with a readily - typed letter that you can use as a templete for all of your recipients.

HOW IS MAIL MERGE USEFUL?

Mail merge is useful if you need to send a large number of letters to, say, clients of your business. It removes the hassle of having to type an individual letter to each and every recipient.

Instead, when you mail merge, you insert a specific list of information from a database, like a list of names or addresses, into specified places in your template letter and then MS Word will take care of the rest.

Select “LETTERS AND MAILINGS” from the tools menu. From there choose “MAIL MERGE WIZARD”

The following dialogue box should appear on the right hand side of your screen, as shown…

Leave the cicle marked with “LETTERS”

Click on the “NEXT: STARTING DOCUMENT” button to proceed to the next stage

In this next dialogue box you have three options…

“USE THE CURRENT DOCUMENT”, which merges the document that you have open in front of you with your list of recepients

“START FROM A TEMPLATE” which lets you start from a ready-to-use mail merge template that can be customised to suit your needs

And “START FROM EXISTING DOCUMENT” which lets you take an existing mail merge that you may have already started on and continue to work on it

Choose the one that you wish and click on the “NEXT: SELECT RECEPIENTS” button to proceed to the next stage

For this example we will use the option “USE THE CURRENT DOCUMENT” and use a letter that has been previously typed as a template. We will use the example of the letter shown at left

Note the words within the arrowheads (< >) on either side of them. These are the places where you will enter the specific information from your database or list of recipients.

The following dialogue box will appear which lets us select where we want our list of recipients to come from. We have three options…

“USE AN EXISTING LIST” which takes names and addresses from a file or database

“SELECT FROM OUTLOOK CONTACTS” in which we can take names and addresses from Outlook Express’ contacts folder

“TYPE A NEW LIST” where we can manually type and create a list of recipients. This is useful if you don’t have your list of recipients handy on a database or file or if you only have them on paper

For this example we will use the “USE AN EXISTING LIST” option

Next we must import a list of contacts from a file or database on our computer. To do this, click on the blue “BROWSE…” button

If you are selecting one of the other options and you need to import or create a list of recipients all you have to do is click on the blue button that comes up in place of “BROWSE” – either a “CHOOSE CONTACTS FOLDER” in the case of Outlook, or “CREATE” if you are creating a new list

Once you have clicked the “BROWSE” button the following window, shown above, should appear. Now you can browse through your computer’s files and select the database or file with your list of recipients in it

An example of a recipient list is shown above. The tick boxes on the far left allow you to decide which of the recipients in the list receive your letter

If you do not want someone to receive the letter simply uncheck the box corresponding with their name, as shown

Once you have selected your list the following dialogue box will appear on the right hand side of your screen. It displays a number of options and changes you can make to your list. These options are highlighted in blue

You can either edit the current list of recepients

Or you can upload an entirely different list if you find the list you currently have selected is the wrong one

Once you are happy with the list you have selected click on the “NEXT: WRITE YOUR LETTER” button

We are now given a couple of options on the right hand side of our screen. These include “ADDRESS BLOCK…” “GREETING LINE…” and “ELECTRONIC POSTAGE”

We don’t have to worry about these three. We only need the “MORE ITEMS…” option

Now we will insert the specific data from the file or database that you have selected by clicking on the “MORE ITEMS…” button

To use this option you must first highlight the word where you want to insert your specific database information, and then click on the “MORE ITEMS” buttons

You must then select the appropriate field that corresponds with the word you highlighted from the little box that pops up, as shown on the right

Once you have done this click “INSERT”. To comfirm that the field was merged successfully these symbols ({{ }}) will appear on either side of the word. Do this for all of your specific fields (ie Box No, City, ect. in the example above)

Once you have merged all your fields click on the “NEXT: PREVIEW YOUR LETTERS” button to go to the next stage

Now you can preview your letters by clicking on the [<<] [>>] arrow buttons

Once you are happy that everything is correct click on the “NEXT:COMPLETE THE MERGE” button to proceed to the final stage

Now all you have to do is click on the “PRINT…” button and select your printer, and all of your merged letters will be printed out for you