But before we delve into the harrowing journey that is Mail Merge, I’d like to take the time out to thank you, my readers. I am now a permanent columnist, largely due to your generous comments and feedback on my previous articles! I appreciate the letters; please keep them coming. I’d also like to congratulate my husband for using the word “quixotic” in his article this month. I used that word and explained its meaning several times (it is a reference to Don Quixote and the futility of his ongoing battle against the windmills), and now he’s actually using it. It’s times like these that make my life meaningful.

Ok, so let’s get into it. As I mentioned before, Mail Merge allows you to customize any document with personal information, turning a generic letter into a personally customized letter. I would say that it is simple to use, but that would be a lie. Anyway, if it were simple to use, why would I be writing this article? ? 

I am walking you through Mail Merge as it appears in Word 2002. If you have an earlier version of Word, it will be different. How different? Well it depends on how old the version of Word is that you are using. The older it is, the more different it will be. The good news is, Mail Merge has gotten easier with the later releases of Word. So if you are going to use this feature often, do yourself a favor and upgrade. It will make your life much easier.

To start, you will want to write your basic letter or holiday card. I usually write about how my cat Panther looks more and more beautiful every year, or how he seems to be drooling more often (hey, what do you expect, the cat’s 14 years old!). Be sure to leave out names and other personal information. You can even leave out the greeting (Dear…) as Word will take care of that for you!  When you’ve finished the body of the document, then it is time to invoke Mail Merge. You can do this by simply selecting Tools from the menu bar, then Letters and Mailings, then Mail Merge Wizard. The Mail Merge wizard will appear as a smaller pane on the right hand side. The first thing it asks is what type of document you want to use with Mail Merge. As you can see, you not only have the choice of letters, but also email messages, envelopes, directories, and labels. Since we are doing a letter, we will leave this choice selected and click ‘Next: Starting Document’ in the lower right hand corner. 

Now you can choose which document to start from. I always suggest typing the letter first, but if you want to use a document that’s already been created, you can do so from here. Click on ‘Next: Select Recipients’ to continue. 

At this point, you must choose your data source. The data source is simply where the specific information is coming from. Most people have contact information already setup in Outlook. Or you may have a comma or tab delimited text file. Maybe those of you who are overzealous have set up an Access database for your contacts. Or perhaps some of you were unfortunate enough to have setup contact information in Works. Whatever the case, you can choose your data source by clicking the Browse hyperlink with the ‘Use an existing list’ bullet selected at the top. The Select Data Source dialog box is opened, and if you click on the Files of Type drop down near the bottom, you will see all of the different data types that Word can work with. Be aware that you are looking at the contents of the My Data Sources folder, which unless you’ve used this before, probably does not contain your data list, so you will have to navigate to the correct location on your hard drive. I did a test comma-delimited text file, and found it works much better if you have headers in the first row – for example, First Name, Last Name, Address, etc. in the first row, data in subsequent rows. It automatically takes the headers from the first row, so it’s just easier to set it up that way. 

The other common place to get names is from your Outlook Contacts list. Choose ‘Select from Outlook Contacts,’ and then ‘choose Contacts folder.’ You should see your corresponding mailbox there, and when you click ok, it will generate a list of your contacts from Outlook. This dialog box is great because you can sort and query your list to include only specific recipients from a certain state, zip code, whatever. To do an ascending sort you simply click on the heading name, and to do a descending sort you simply click again. You can do a simple filter by clicking on the drop down arrows and looking at the available choices. For example, if you only wanted to see your TX recipients, click on the down arrow by state and choose ‘TX.’ To do an advanced query in which you can specify multiple parameters, click on any of the drop down arrows near the heading, then choose advanced. This brings you to the handy-dandy Filter and Sort dialog box, a feature so versatile and bug-free they haven’t changed it for years! The first tab is the filter tab, where you specify criteria to limit the records. The first drop down is field, which is where you specify the field to search from. The next field is comparison – greater than, less than, equal to, etc. The last field is compare to, which is where you specify the criteria. I have a very large list, so I only want to deal with half of my recipients this week, and half next week. I can do an advanced filter by Last Name, setting the comparison to less than, and the compare to field to K* (the * is a wildcard character that indicates any number of characters or letters after the K are allowed). Additionally, I only want Texas recipients. So once I’ve filled out the first line the logical operator drop down is available. You have the choice of ‘And / Or.’ ‘And’ will further restrict the records returned because both lines must be correct to return a value. ‘Or’ will increase the record set because either line can be true to return a value. To find only Texas recipients, I leave the And option and fill in the second line, specifying state for field, and equal to for comparison, and TX for compare to (you don’t have to worry about case-sensitivity – it will return both tx and TX).  At this point, I can also sort my records by clicking on the sort tab at the top, and choosing the field I want to sort by – Last Name. When you run this, you should see only recipients whose last names begin with A-J and who are from Texas. Then you can click OK to exit the dialog box, and click ‘Next: Write your letter’ to continue with Mail Merge.

It informs you to write the letter, but since we’ve already done that we can now proceed to the fun part! This is the step where you put the Mail Merge fields into your document. If you’ve ever worked with fields before in Word, you know that they are not static – they can change to specific data. The same is true for Mail Merge fields; you are simply inserting a code that indicates the field will change according to the data in your data source. So I want to insert an address near the top under the date. I click exactly on the line where I want to put it, then choose Address Block in the Mail Merge Wizard pane. At this point, the Insert Address Block box pops up, and asks me how I want it to look. Once you choose your preferences, then click ok, you should see the <<Address Block>> field. Think of it as a placeholder until you merge the actual data. You can do the same for Greeting Line – as I mentioned before, Word will put the ‘Dear’ in for you. Click on ‘Next: Preview your letters.’

The next step is to preview your letters, as they will look before you commit to the merge. You can browse through a few to make sure they look right – a lot of the time, you will see that because of inconsistent data, you will have a few gaps where information should be. If it’s one or two things, you can correct it after the merge. However, if you find a lot of blank spaces, check that you’ve got the right field there or correct your data source. To browse through the recipients, you must use the arrows provided at the top of the wizard pane or on the mail merge toolbar – you cannot page down as the data has not been merged yet. You are given the option to either edit the recipient list or better yet, to exclude a recipient, which comes in handy for the people who sent you fruitcake last year. At this point, you’re ready to take the plunge and click on ‘Next: Complete the Merge.’

Woo-hoo! You’ve Mail Merged! Choose to either Print the letters or edit individual ones. When you choose to edit individual letters, this is when it merges it to a new document, where each page is one letter to a specific recipient. This is where a lot of people get confused, because another document is generated. This document has a current snapshot of the data through the merged fields. You do not have to save this document, as your data may change between now and next year when you want to use it again. What’s important to save is the document with the mail merge fields. That way, you have a document with only field codes and whenever you run a new merge you will be sure the latest data is being used. 

Going through the wizard is the easiest way to do it, however, those of you with older versions of Word will be happy to hear that everything done through the wizard can be completed with the Mail Merge toolbar. You can turn this on the traditional way – right click on any existing toolbar and choose Mail Merge, or you can look in Tools, Letters and Mailings, then choose Show Mail Merge Toolbar. There are buttons to open and edit the data source, insert merge fields, view merged data, and find specific records. You also have the options for where you want to merge to – the printer, the document, email or even a fax if that capability is setup on your computer. You have to manually put in the address fields, and provide appropriate spaces and carriage returns, but it basically works the same way. After you’ve provided the merge fields, you can preview the merged data and then choose the output. 

That’s my basic overview of Mail Merge, to get you familiar with how it works so that you’re not afraid to experiment with it. I know some of you with older versions of Word will be looking at a big Mail Merge dialog box with 3 steps that acts very strangely sometimes. I have worked with that version for many years, and I have seen it do some bizarre things. If you can’t get that dialog box to work, my advice is to try to do it manually through the toolbar, or upgrade. If you have questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.

With that, Happy Holidays everyone, and I look forward to writing more about the joys of Microsoft Office in the New Year!