Mail merge

Mail Merge is an advanced and very useful feature of MS Word application designed for effective communication through mass mailings. You can create form letters, e-mail messages, labels, envelopes, coupons from a single template and personalize it to as many variables as you want.

First you need to create a document to be used as a template where you put all the information fields common to all the varying elements. Once activated, Mail Merge will correlate the fields in the template and the database containing matching fields and take out individual data to create distinct documents.

By using Mail Merge, you can write a letter and personalize it to several customers with their individual names and addresses mentioned on it. Or you can design an envelope containing your return address and send it to different addresses from a database. To know how it’s done, please continue reading below:

First of all, build a Word document. For example, you write a letter introducing a new product to your customers.

• With the template document open, go to the Tools menu. On Letters and Mailings option, click Mail Merge or Mail Merge wizard for Word 2002
• A mail merge task pane will open and ask you to choose the document type. Suppose you select Letters. Then click on Next to continue to the next step.
• Next you’ll be asked to choose the main document which you want to use as the template. As you’ve the desired document already open, you’ll select Use the current document option here.
• Now, to bring the varying individual data from its source to the main document you want to merge into, you’ll have to connect both of them. To connect, you’ll be required to choose the file from options provided in Select Recipients dialogue box. You can connect to your contacts from your Outlook.
• Now it’s time to add fields to your letter. There will be options for Greeting Line, Address block. You’ll decide where to put the fields line in the letter which will be displayed within chevrons, like «AddressBlock». You need to match fields in the letter with the matching columns or fields in the data source.
• Before completing a merge, you’ll be allowed to have a preview of the letters to be sent or printed, each personalized to a unique recipient. At the preview stage, you can look at the individual letters and choose to edit them. Click Next to continue and Complete the merge when you’re ready to print or send your letters.

Once saved, the next time you open the template document, a connection will be automatically made to the data source and you can proceed with the function to print or send letter again in the same fashion. Mail Merge is though a very beneficial use of MS Word it consumes much more time and effort too.

To imagine them being lost and re-build it all is quite a cumbersome task. To help recover any data loss, use Stellar Phoenix Word Recovery Software to repair corrupted files and recover your Word documents.