Locked lesson.

Upgrade

About this lesson

Auto-populate a form letter with various fields pulled from a list.

Quick reference

Mail Merge to Form Letters

Merge mailing lists into a form letter with one time-saving process.

When to use

Manually entering data into multiple form letters is tedious and can be rampant with errors. If you have a mailing list already established, you can easily merge the data to a Microsoft Word document.

Instructions

  • Begin with a blank document
  • Click on the Mailings ribbon
  • Start Mail Merge and click Letters:  

 

In this exercise, we will use the Mailings ribbon rather than the Mail Merge Wizard. 

  1.  Select Recipients asks you where your list is. Choose one option: Use existing, Select from Outlook, Type a new list
    • If you choose Type a new list, enter the data, click OK, and SAVE the file.
    • If you click Use an existing list, the file system immediately opens and expects you to find your list. Do that and click OK or OPEN.
  2.  Edit Recipient List button lights up and when clicked notice the options to sort and filter, or select only certain records.
    • Click OK
  3.  Address Block button
    • In the letter click where the address will be located, click Address Block and make your choices in the dialogue box and click OK
    • Notice the new field appeared
    • Remove (delete) any other address information that is on the letter.

     It is VITAL that you do not erase or delete the chevron marks on the field. They are codes.

  1. Greeting Line button
    • In the letter, click where the salutation, or Greeting line, will be located
    • Click the Greeting Line button and make your choices in the dialogue box and click OK
    • Remove any other Salutation text.
  2.   Insert Merge Field allows you to place specific data fields within the text of the form letter.
  3.  Highlight Merge Fields will put a grey background (non-printing) behind the merge fields so you can easily see them within your form letter.
  4.  Preview Results will display how the letter appears with the data displayed.  Click the arrows to view the next and previous letters.  Note: this is NOT the final document.
  5.  Finish & Merge
         It is recommended to Edit Individual Documents because it gives one last chance to preview and/or change each individual form.
Login to download
  • 00:04 In this exercise, we are going to do a mail merge to a form letter.
  • 00:08 Now, a form letter is simply a full page letter,
  • 00:11 any kind of document where you actually insert field codes into the letter.
  • 00:17 Instead of having to retype every individual, company name, and address,
  • 00:22 we just pull it from our mail merge list.
  • 00:25 It's fantastic, let's go ahead and start the process.
  • 00:28 On the Mailings ribbon, I won't be using the Step-by-Step this time.
  • 00:32 I'm going to choose to just go through the Mailing ribbon from the left to the right.
  • 00:37 I do have to tell it that I'm going to start with letters,
  • 00:41 and it's going to be the one on my screen, and nothing really happens.
  • 00:45 So now I'm going to select Recipients, and
  • 00:49 I'm going to use the existing list that we've been using for the other lessons.
  • 00:55 Activate that and hit Open.
  • 00:57 Now, you won't see anything open actually right away, but
  • 01:01 the Edit Recipient just lit up.
  • 01:04 I'm going to click on that, resize the box, and mention once again,
  • 01:07 Microsoft will fix this someday, but right now, at the time of this recording,
  • 01:11 they are collapsing.
  • 01:12 It's okay, I can still see everything.
  • 01:15 Now, in the form letter, I'm going to pull in the entire address, but
  • 01:19 then individually, I'm going to pop in their company name into the letter text,
  • 01:24 and also the address line, clicking OK on this.
  • 01:27 Let's go ahead and use the fields.
  • 01:29 Notice on the Mailings ribbon, the Address Block, the Greeting Line,
  • 01:33 Insert Merge Field, we're about to use these three.
  • 01:35 I already have my address sitting right out here.
  • 01:38 I'm going to delete this, click on the Address Block,
  • 01:43 decide how formal or informal I want this to be.
  • 01:47 If I have a different list that doesn't match the Microsoft fields,
  • 01:52 I can hit this and match them up.
  • 01:54 Clicking OK, now the AddressBlock showed up.
  • 01:57 I can readjust how that lines up.
  • 02:00 Please remember, if I accidentally delete those arrows,
  • 02:04 I have just broken the mail merge, and
  • 02:06 every letter will print with Chevron address block, and it'll look very bad.
  • 02:11 So please make sure, leave those arrows alone.
  • 02:14 What I like to do to make sure is to hit the Highlight Merge Field so
  • 02:17 they stand out to me.
  • 02:18 That gray area will not print in the background, but
  • 02:22 it sure is a flag to me not to mess with it.
  • 02:25 All right, let's go on to the Greeting Line.
  • 02:27 Click under the Greeting Line where it says Dear FirstName.
  • 02:30 Hit the button, Greeting Line.
  • 02:33 And you can decide how formal you want to be in here.
  • 02:37 Mr. Randall or just Joshua Randall, comma or colon.
  • 02:43 And then what if you have a letter that doesn't have a name to it?
  • 02:47 Well, you can choose Dear Sir or Madam, To Whom It May Concern, or
  • 02:51 notice, there's a flashing insertion point in there.
  • 02:54 That means I can type my own.
  • 02:58 So if there is no name at all, I'll get a letter greeting line that just says Hello.
  • 03:03 Go ahead and click OK.
  • 03:05 Now, let's put the merge fields in.
  • 03:09 Okay, now, I'm going to highlight the CompanyNameHere.
  • 03:13 Click on the Insert Merge Field, notice I have a button on top and
  • 03:17 a dropdown on the bottom.
  • 03:18 The dropdown lets me choose one, but I have to go up and
  • 03:21 hit it every single time.
  • 03:23 The top button opens up the box.
  • 03:27 I can hit Company Name here and hit Insert, but then I have to close it.
  • 03:32 So I like using the dropdown arrow.
  • 03:36 So I'll use the dropdown arrow, choose Address_Line 1, and it closes right away.
  • 03:41 Either way, I have to go back up to the top.
  • 03:43 Okay, at this point, let's test this thing.
  • 03:45 Notice that I've got Preview Results right up here.
  • 03:48 So I can turn the Preview Results on.
  • 03:50 I do not like how that address is formatted.
  • 03:53 And I can arrow to the right, arrow to the left, and check them all out.
  • 03:57 Notice also, I only have one piece of paper over here, so this is not finished.
  • 04:02 So right now, I can highlight this address line.
  • 04:06 Come to the Home ribbon, change my line spacing.
  • 04:11 Go back to the Mailings ribbon, turn off the Preview Results.
  • 04:15 I love that, Dear FirstName, better get rid of that.
  • 04:18 Okay, I think it looks good.
  • 04:21 The last button is Finished & Merge.
  • 04:24 This will create a brand new document with three pages in it.
  • 04:27 Go ahead and click Finish & Merge.
  • 04:29 I never send directly to the Print Documents, I like to have one last chance
  • 04:34 to eyeball everything, clicking Edit Individual Documents.
  • 04:39 Go ahead and click OK.
  • 04:41 Take a look at the Navigation pane on the left-hand side, I do have three documents.
  • 04:45 My return address is formatted fine, the company name,
  • 04:49 the address came in just fine.
  • 04:51 I probably would absolutely change the date before I finish that merge, but
  • 04:56 at this point, I can print, I can save this document, use it again, or
  • 05:01 just discard it.
  • 05:02 So that is merging to a form letter.
  • 05:04 We can put in specific fields within the letter that will
  • 05:09 auto-populate depending on the individual information.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Gift this course