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About this lesson

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

Lesson versions

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2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Mail Merge to Form Letters.docx
22.2 KB Mail Merge to Form Letters - Solution.docx
24.6 KB

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 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. 

  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.

  1. Highlight Merge Fields will put a grey background (non-printing) behind the merge fields so you can easily see them within your form letter.
  2.  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.
  3.  Finish & Merge.

It is recommended to Edit Individual Documents because it gives one last chance to preview and/or change each individual form.

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  • 00:05 In this lesson we're gonna do a mail merge to a form letter which is a time saving
  • 00:09 process, because not only does it replace the name and
  • 00:13 address that who this is going to, but it replaces contents within the letter.
  • 00:18 Oh my goodness.
  • 00:19 So much time saving.
  • 00:20 And also I'm not going to use the wizard like I did in the last two lessons.
  • 00:25 I'm gonna take you through just using the ribbon buttons right up here, and
  • 00:29 we literally go from left all the way to the right, to the very end.
  • 00:32 All right, I do need to first start with the Start Mail Merge, and click Letters.
  • 00:36 And it assumes the letter on my screen is the one I wanna use, and it is correct.
  • 00:40 Then the next button is Select Recipients.
  • 00:43 When we click that, we can type a new list use an existing which I will use or
  • 00:47 choose from Outlook Contacts because Outlook and Word do speak to each other.
  • 00:51 I'm gonna go to use an existing list and this is the same list I've been using.
  • 00:56 And for the last two lessons, so I'll go ahead and open that.
  • 00:59 When that comes up, now I can edit the recipient list if I want.
  • 01:02 You've seen this screen before, if you've seen the other two lessons.
  • 01:05 I can uncheck anything I want here.
  • 01:07 I can filter these by city, by state, by zip code.
  • 01:10 I could find duplicates, I don't want to do anything, I'll hit OK.
  • 01:14 I do want to use just those three names.
  • 01:16 And now the next button is Address Block.
  • 01:18 See, a Highlight Merge Fields is grayed out, 'cause we haven't put any in yet.
  • 01:22 But Address Block, we absolutely want that to get in there.
  • 01:25 So my insertion point is right by the word, Name.
  • 01:27 I'm gonna go ahead and click on Address Block, and
  • 01:29 I have to just review this carefully.
  • 01:31 Do you want to use all of these items of course, you can go through and
  • 01:34 take a look at some of these, all right, I just want to hit OK.
  • 01:37 I'm not gonna make any changes at this point, hit OK.
  • 01:40 There's my Address Block.
  • 01:41 Well after that scenario I certainly don't need the rest of this.
  • 01:45 So I'm going to get rid, oh my gosh, I must getting the wrong button.
  • 01:50 I want to get rid of the remaining,
  • 01:53 let's see, just delete that and I just wanna leave the AddressBlock now.
  • 01:58 Now this turned gray I felt like it was highlighted,
  • 02:01 my merge Highlight Merge fields is on.
  • 02:04 If I turn that off, you can clearly see the chevron's.
  • 02:07 Now please keep in mind, do not delete those chevron codes,
  • 02:10 those little arrows on each side.
  • 02:11 If you delete those you break the mail merge, and we don't want that to happen.
  • 02:16 So they're easier to see if you leave them highlighted, but I'm gonna go ahead and
  • 02:21 leave my highlighted.
  • 02:22 I generally do.
  • 02:23 So I'm going to use a greeting line.
  • 02:26 Instead of the Dear FirstName with a colon,
  • 02:28 I'm going to click greeting line, and here we answer some questions.
  • 02:33 How do you want it to read?
  • 02:34 Would you want Dear, To, or nothing?
  • 02:37 I want Dear, that's fine, To Mr., very formal or not very formal.
  • 02:42 Just fill not very formal.
  • 02:43 Do you want that followed by a comma, a colon, or nothing?
  • 02:46 Well, a comma works for me.
  • 02:48 If there isn't a recipient name, do you want Dear Sir or Madam, or
  • 02:52 To Whom It May Concern, or nothing?
  • 02:54 I'll take the To Whom It May Concern.
  • 02:56 And let's see,
  • 02:58 and then of course, we can scroll through and see what it's gonna look like.
  • 03:01 That's fine.
  • 03:02 And we're gonna hit OK, here we go.
  • 03:05 And it highlighted because this is on, now because I can see the chevrons there.
  • 03:09 I'm gonna go ahead and get rid of the existing one, including the
  • 03:12 colon over there.
  • 03:13 Because I included that in the greeting line.
  • 03:16 Okay, here comes the good stuff.
  • 03:17 Now we're going to replace, these sections, company name here.
  • 03:21 I'm gonna double-click that.
  • 03:23 A double-click will select an entire word and since there's no space bar, and
  • 03:27 it thinks it's a word.
  • 03:28 And now, this is the end-all be-all to the mail merge is right here,
  • 03:32 the Insert Merge Field.
  • 03:34 So when you click on the insert merge field, this list
  • 03:37 happens to match the entire list that is attached to this, that the recipient list.
  • 03:42 I went and told it which recipient list.
  • 03:44 Here's all the fields.
  • 03:45 One of them is a Company Name, click.
  • 03:47 Here we go company name with chevrons,
  • 03:49 double-click the StreetAddress come up to insert merge field.
  • 03:52 And click Address_Line_1, has the chevrons.
  • 03:56 If I had their Facebook or their web page,
  • 03:58 I could double-click and put that in there, as well.
  • 04:00 Now, again, I can turn off these fields.
  • 04:02 I kinda like them on.
  • 04:03 I don't mind seeing them.
  • 04:05 It doesn't bother me.
  • 04:06 Another thing we can do is right over here, preview the results.
  • 04:10 So you can get an idea of what it's going to look like, okay?
  • 04:13 So I'm just gonna cycle through these, so I can see what they look like.
  • 04:16 Okay everything looks good, everything looks like it's changing, that's fine.
  • 04:19 Please note, down in the bottom left-hand corner, says Page 1 of 1.
  • 04:24 Well didn't you just see three letters?
  • 04:27 No. This, remember, is my mail merge.
  • 04:29 I haven't finished yet.
  • 04:31 When I finish, then you'll see Page 1 of 3.
  • 04:34 So everything is fine, I don't need to check for errors,
  • 04:37 I'm gonna go right over here and finish in merge, I am not going to
  • 04:40 send this straight to the printer, because, oh my gosh, anything could go wrong.
  • 04:43 I wanna look at this one more time, before I send this.
  • 04:47 I'm gonna hit Edit Individual Documents.
  • 04:50 My title's going to change.
  • 04:51 And that bottom left corner will change.
  • 04:53 Click All of them and here you go,
  • 04:56 the title of my document has changed to letters one.
  • 05:01 And look at the bottom left corner, Page 1 of 3, now if I click that,
  • 05:05 that will pop up in my navigation pane.
  • 05:07 And when the navigation pane is open,
  • 05:09 that's when you can see a little thumbnail document.
  • 05:11 Yup, there's three of them and that's it, now I can hit Print.
  • 05:15 That is one of the best uses of mail merges, mail merge to a form.
  • 05:19 I hope you'll use it.
  • 05:20 Thank you.

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