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About this lesson
Auto-populate a form letter with various text pulled from a list.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
Exercise files
Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.
Mail Merge to Form Letters.docx94.4 KB Mail Merge to Form Letters - Solution.docx
18.2 KB
Quick reference
Mail Merge to Form Letters
Auto-populate a form letter with various text pulled from a list.
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 an MS Word document.
Instructions
- Begin with a blank document
- Click Mailings,
,
- Start Mail Merge and click Letters:
In this exercise we will use the Mailings ribbon rather than the Mail Merge Wizard.
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.
Edit Recipient List button lights up and when clicked notice the options to sort and filter, or select only certain records.
- Click OK
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”.
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.
Insert Merge Field allows you to place specific data fields within the text of the form letter.
Highlight Merge Fields will put a grey background (non-printing) behind the merge fields so you can easily see them within your form letter.
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.
Finish & Merge
It is recommended to Edit Individual Documents because it gives one last chance to preview and/or change each individual form.
- 00:04 In this lesson, we're gonna mail merge a list of addresses and
- 00:08 information into a form letter.
- 00:10 And this is the ultimate goal with mail merging because it saves you so much time.
- 00:15 So, on my mailings ribbon, I do have a Start Mail Merge.
- 00:17 I'm not gonna use the Step by Step this time,
- 00:19 this time we're gonna use the ribbon.
- 00:21 So we're going to click on Letters, right here.
- 00:24 Now I already have a letter on my screen, and
- 00:26 it wants me to, it just assumes I want to use the one on my screen, which is fine.
- 00:30 So I'm going to Select Recipients.
- 00:32 I'm not gonna type a new list.
- 00:33 I am gonna use the existing one, but I could also choose from Outlook contacts.
- 00:37 If I had a list I was going to point to.
- 00:39 So I'll use an existing list.
- 00:41 It defaults to this list.
- 00:43 Don't let these two files scare you.
- 00:45 They're just a couple weird files that Microsoft makes but
- 00:48 hopefully your existing list is in here.
- 00:51 If not just go ahead and
- 00:52 find your existing list that was created in the previous lessons.
- 00:56 I'll go ahead and hit Open, and nothing happened except that.
- 00:58 A couple of my buttons, they were gray a minute ago and now they're kinda lit up.
- 01:02 So, I could hit the edit recipient list and here's my entire list that I
- 01:07 could uncheck certain ones, I can sort and filter, maybe just to a certain zip code.
- 01:12 Everything is fine in there, so I'll leave that one alone.
- 01:14 But it is time to start putting the information here.
- 01:17 So, I've got my address right here,
- 01:20 but I've decided I'm gonna use my Address Block instead.
- 01:23 So when I click Address Block, it just asks, do you wat it to look like this?
- 01:27 I'm gonna say yes, hit OK.
- 01:29 And it put in my Address Block with those chevrons.
- 01:32 Now I've been talking about those chevrons in the other lessons.
- 01:36 Let me just delete the remnants of this other address right there.
- 01:39 Please don't delete the arrows on either side of that code
- 01:42 because you will break the mail merge.
- 01:44 So just leave those little arrows, they're called chevrons, just leave them in place.
- 01:48 Now, dear first name, so I'm gonna double click that line and
- 01:51 this time we're going to do, actually we're gonna do a greeting line.
- 01:55 Put my insertion point in front of Dear First Name, go up to Greeting Line.
- 01:59 You can actually choose.
- 01:59 Do you want to say Dear or To?
- 02:01 Do you want it to be formal, To Mr. Randall?
- 02:04 Or just to an informal name?
- 02:08 Do you want it to be followed by a comma, or a colon, or nothing at all?
- 02:12 It's your personal preference, but if you don't choose a punctuation here,
- 02:17 you have to actually type it on to the sheet.
- 02:19 Now if you're missing a name, would you like it to say Dear Sir or Madam, or
- 02:24 To Whom it May Concern?
- 02:25 And then here's the preview.
- 02:27 So I'm gonna go ahead and hit OK to this.
- 02:29 The code goes in here and I'm gonna get rid of what I had there previously.
- 02:34 I mean, getting rid of the punctuation because I chose
- 02:37 punctuations on the actions.
- 02:39 All right, now here's the form letter part, within the letter itself,
- 02:43 I can pick and choose pieces of the database to drop in here.
- 02:45 So I'm gonna double click this word, CompanyNameHere and
- 02:48 this little button is total magic.
- 02:50 Insert Merge Fields, click on that, and
- 02:52 this list happens to match the list in my database.
- 02:55 So I'm going to put Company Name.
- 02:57 And there it is, with the chevrons around it.
- 03:00 How about Street Address?
- 03:01 Just select what you want to replace, and
- 03:04 I'm going to put Street Address, right there.
- 03:07 And that's all I'm going to change right in here.
- 03:09 Please take a look at the rest of these options,
- 03:12 because one of them says highlight merge fields.
- 03:16 The merge fields are anything with a chevron.
- 03:18 Kind of hard to see them until you click.
- 03:20 That button and there they are.
- 03:22 They really stand out.
- 03:23 Those grey backgrounds won't print.
- 03:25 They're simply there on the electronic file to show you where you've got fields.
- 03:29 All right, let's check this out and see how they look.
- 03:30 I'm gonna go ahead and hit the Preview Results.
- 03:33 Now this is simply a preview, this is not the final.
- 03:35 I can hit these little arrows to cycle through my list,
- 03:39 you can see them changing.
- 03:40 I'm gonna unclick preview results, and I'm going to go ahead and Finish and Merge.
- 03:45 I've got a couple of options.
- 03:46 Edit Individual Documents, which I like,
- 03:48 because it gives me one last chance to read the letters and make any changes.
- 03:52 Print sends it straight to the printer.
- 03:55 Or Send Email Messages, had I used Outlook and
- 03:57 an email address line, this would have worked.
- 04:00 It's not going to work right now.
- 04:01 So, you can choose either way.
- 04:03 If I hit the edit individual addresses, oddly,
- 04:08 I'm getting this little glitch every time I use this thing, so let me try it again.
- 04:12 Here we go.
- 04:14 My title says Letters2.
- 04:16 It's a brand new document.
- 04:19 I haven't saved it or anything, but notice,
- 04:21 right down here it says page 1 of 3.
- 04:24 These are my three letters to all my people.
- 04:27 So just so you know that, you will get a final separate document, but it's awesome.
- 04:32 Now I can print these, all right?
- 04:34 Thank you.
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