04 PA MAGAZINE - TECHNOLOGY
Creating a Mail Merge
with Microsoft Word
Letters and emails are the bread and butter of a working day. Sometimes www.london-pa.com/data/mainletter.doc
there may be one letter that needs to be sent to fifty different people, This type of letter could be personalized and sent to as many companies
all with a different email or postal address and with a different form of as you wish. In order to send this letter to lots of different companies we
introduction. Sometimes it can be ‘Dear Kath’ and sometimes ‘Dear Mr. firstly need a database which has the company name, contact and address
Rogers’. It all depends on who you are sending it to and the context. Mail
Merge makes it easy to create letters or emails that have the same or
very similar text and are customized for different recipients. Just take one
standard letter, one mailing list, mix them up with the Mail Merge feature
and out pop a set of correctly personalized letters, emails or labels. It’s
worth the effort in being able to use it well as mail merge is the quickest
way to send personalized communication without having to draft each
message separately or manually enter names or addresses. details of the person we are sending the letter to. Save the letter and
click Next: Select Recipients which is again at the bottom of the Mail
A mail merge consists of a number of steps: Merge pane.
1. Create the text of the letter that you wish to send. This is called
the Main or Master Document. Creating the Database
2. Create or link to the mailing list that you want to send the mail merge At this point the database or mailing list is selected. If you don’t have a
to. This is called selecting the Data Source. The data source can be database or list then you will have to create one. The easiest way to do
an Outlook email list, a database, a Word document or an this is with a spreadsheet such as Microsoft Excel or you can use the
Excel spreadsheet. ‘Type a New List’ option in the Mail Merge pane. We will create a list with
3. Edit the Main document to insert the data fields and select the people Microsoft Excel. If you already have a list set up with Excel or another
or records that you want to send the merge to. program then you can just find the list and continue with the Use an
4. The final step is to perform the merge and either print or email it. Existing List option, otherwise we will need to create a list. Create a blank
sheet with Microsoft Excel and type the following. Afterwards save the file.
Creating the Main/Master Document This file can be downloaded at www.london-pa.com/data/mailinglist.xls
Open a new blank document (File, New from the menu) and then click on
the Tools menu and then Letters and Mailings
and select Mail Merge. You can also use
a previously saved document for the main
document. Just open the document and select
the Mail Merge option from the Tools menu. The
Mail Merge pane shown will appear to the right
Once the file has been saved then return to where we left off in Microsoft
of the screen.
Word and select Use an Existing List and then Browse. Navigate your
folder lists until you find the file you just created in Excel (make sure that
Select the type of document you wish to create.
the Files of Type list box says All Data Sources). Once you have found your
For this example, select Letters and then click
Excel file then select it with the mouse and click the Open button or just
Next: Starting Document at the bottom of the
double-click it. The Select Table dialog box will appear as shown below.
Mail Merge pane. You will see that we are on
step one of six steps. We then either continue
with using the current document or selecting
an existing document. We will use the current
document and as this is the default option then
we will get on with typing our letter.
Type the following, leaving a blank in the areas of the letter where
we would normally include the address or salutation (or download from
PA MAGAZINE - SPRING 08
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