Creating letters using mail merge in Microsoft Word (Windows PC) What is mail-merge? Mail merge is a tool in Microsoft Word that allows you to send out batches of personalised letters. Instead of sending out a generic identical letter to all recipients, personalised data is pulled from another file, eg an Excel spreadsheet or Word table, to create personalised letters for each recipient.

Steps for creating the merge

• Set up the Excel spreadsheet or Word table.

o For flexibility, each piece of information must be held in its own column in the table (e.g. address would be split into Address 1, Address 2, City, County and Postcode columns)

o Each column must have a unique, easily identifiable column header.

Start the mail merge in Word

• Open Microsoft Word.

• Click on the Mailings tab.

• Click on the Start Mail Merge icon.

• Click on Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard. The Mail Merge pane will appear at the right of the screen.

Specify that you require a letters mail-merge

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane, click to select Letters.

• At the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Starting document.

Choose your starting document

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane choose whether you want to:

o Use the current document – i.e. type a new letter in the blank Word document

o Start from a template – i.e. browse to find an existing Word template to pre-populate the letter.

o Start from existing document – i.e. browse to find an existing Word document to pre-populate the letter.

• At the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Select recipients.

Link to the Excel spreadsheet or Word table

• In the Mail Merge wizard, choose Use an existing list.

• Click on Browse.

• Navigate the Excel list or Word file containing your mail merge data and click Open.

• If you are using an Excel file, confirm which sheet in your Excel file contains the mail merge data.

• Click OK.

For more about mail-merges, visit https://staff.brighton.ac.uk/is/training and click on the Word icon.

Prepare your data

• Deselect the tick boxes to exclude certain recipients from the mail merge

• Use the drop-down arrows on a column to only include recipients that match certain criteria

• To sort your letters, click on the Sort icon and specify which column you want to sort by. Letters will print in this sort order, making this useful for grouping letters together, eg, if you have several letters going to the same company or department, sorting the list by the company or department will collate them when printing.

• Click OK.

• At the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Write your letter

Write the letter

Adding individual mail merge fields

• In the Word document, type the letter.

• Whenever you want to pull personalised text from the Excel file or Word table, in the Mail Merge wizard pane on the right, click on

• The pop-up window has a menu of the columns in your Excel file or Word table to choose from.

• Click on the column you want to pull in and then click on Insert and then Close.

• The field will appear in your Word document surrounded by <<>>

Adding an address block You can build your address yourself using the individual mail merge fields as above. However, to save you some time, Word has some pre-formatted Address Blocks that you can use instead.

• In your letter, position your cursor where you want the address to appear.

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane on the right, click on Address Block

• Choose the format for the recipient’s name

• Use the arrows to scroll through a couple of recipients and use the address preview to check that the addresses are complete.

• If elements of the address are missing (eg town, county or post code), click on the Match Fields button.

The Word mail-merge fields are shown on the left. Word will try to match its fields with the column headings in your Excel file or Word table itself, but will struggle where your column headings are named differently. eg in the example on the right, Word has a City mail merge field whereas the Excel sheet uses the column heading Town.

• Use the drop down arrows on the right to assign the correct field (eg “Town” for the city field in the example on the right)

• Click OK.

• Click OK. Your address will show as <<Address Block>>.

Formatting text

• Use the formatting icons on the Home tab to format text.

• To format the content of an address block or similar, double click on the block and use the formatting icons on the Home tab to format text. The formatting will apply to the entire block.

• If you get large gaps between the lines of an address block: - double click on <<AddressBlock>> - click on the Home tab on the ribbon

- click on the icon - click on Remove space after paragraph

Adding a Greeting line You can build your greeting line yourself using the individual mail merge fields as above. However, to save you some time, Word has some pre-formatted Greeting lines that you can use instead.

• In your letter, position your cursor where you want the greeting to appear.

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane on the right, click on

• Choose the format for the recipient’s name

• Use the arrows to scroll through a couple of recipients and use the preview to check that the greetings are complete.

• If elements of the greeting are missing click on the Match Fields button and follow the instructions on the previous page to match your Excel or Word list’s fields to Word’s mail merge fields.

Adding the date

• Click on the Insert tab in the ribbon, click on and choose the date format you require. This date will update automatically each time you open the file.

Set up a rule to add conditional text When writing your letter, you can add text that is conditional upon the content of one of the columns in your Excel file or Word table. eg if a column in your Excel file specifies whether someone is a member of a pension scheme or not, like the example on the right, you could set the mail merge to print one paragraph on the letters sent to those in the pension scheme, and a different paragraph to those who are not. To do this:

• On the Mailings tab on the ribbon click on Rules.

• Click on If… Then… Else

• In the field name, choose the column header of the column containing the data for the rule (in the example above, it is the Pension_scheme column that says whether someone is in a pension scheme or not).

• In the Compare to field, specify what should be checked for. Eg in our example, we are checking for the text “LGPS” in the Pension Scheme column, as this indicates that someone is in the pension scheme.

• In the Insert this text box, type the text that should appear if someone meets the rule’s criteria. Eg in the example above, if someone has LGPS in the Pension Scheme column.

• In the Otherwise insert this text box, type the text that should appear if someone does not meet the rule’s criteria. You can leave this blank.

• Click OK. You can see the results when previewing the individual letters.

Preview the individual letters When writing the letter, mail merge fields will appear as <<fieldname>> The preview allows you to show how this will look with the real data pulled in from the Excel file or Word table.

• At the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Preview your letters

• To flick through the recipients to see how the letter text changes, in the

Mail Merge wizard click on the arrow key.

• If you need to edit the text, at the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Previous: Write your letter

• When you are happy with the preview of your letters, at the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Complete the merge

Finish the merge

Print without editing individual letters

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Print

• If you have a large recipient list you may want to send the letters to the printer in smaller batches by specifying the range of letters to print using the From/to option. Otherwise click to select All.

• Click OK.

• Check the printer settings and click OK.

Edit individual letters before printing

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Edit individual

letters

• Unless you want to edit all of your letters individually, use the From/To fields to specify which letter you want to edit.

• The selected letter(s) will open as a new separate Word document. You can then edit this document, save it and print it as you would any other Word document. If you have selected more than one letter, the new word document will contain all of the selected letters, with each letter starting on a new page.

If you then want to print all of the other letters, but exclude the one(s) you have just edited manually:

• Your original mail merge file will remain open. To return to editing this file, click on its window on your desktop.

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Previous: Preview your letters.

• In the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Edit recipient list…

• Deselect the ticks for the recipients that you want to exclude from the print run, ie those that you have just edited individually

• Click OK You could also click on the Exclude this recipient button whilst scrolling through the preview of letters using the preview arrows.

• At the bottom of the Mail Merge wizard pane, click on Next: Complete the merge

• Follow the Print without editing individual letters instructions shown opposite

Opening an existing mail-merge Word document If you open a Word document containing a mail-merge linked to an Excel file or Word table, you will see the following message:

This is asking if you still want to link to the same Excel file or Word table for your mail-merge list.

• If you do want to use the same list, click Yes. If your Excel list or Word table has changed, these changes will be pulled into your mail merge. This means that you can set up a frequently used mail-merge in Word and simply update the supporting Excel sheet or Word table for new mail-merges using the same letter text.

• If you do not want to use the same list, click on No. You will need to specify a new list on the Select recipients step of the Mail Merge wizard.

How to show the Mail Merge wizard on an existing mail merge document

• Click on the Mailings tab.

• Click on the Start Mail Merge icon.

• Click on Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard.