In fairness to Microsoft, the new ribbon commands do tend to make the merge process simpler, However the old Word 2000 Mail Merge Helper is still buried in the applicationĬode and can be added to the QAT (Quick Access Toolbar) to provide the old familiar dialogįor those Luddites not yet ready to move on. To the apparent complexity of Word 2002/3 now have an all new set of dialogs to achieve Possible uses - Any letter or document that needs to be sent to multiple recipients is a good candidate for a mail merge.Those who struggled to adapt from the relatively straightforward merge process in Word 2000 At the bottom right corner of the Word window you will find up and down arrows that allow you to move to from one letter to another. Since we entered four names in the worksheet, four letters will be produced. To see what mail merge does, select the Merge to New Document button on the toolbar. If I can be of assistance please call me. To the parents of, As we approach the end of the first six weeks I wanted to let you know how glad I am to have in my period class. The words will not show up in Word as purple, I did that for emphasis. Do the same in each place where you see text surrounded by the less than and greater than signs. I put a space at the end of the word of and selected Insert Merge Field from the Mail Merge toolbar. Many buttons are gray because no field has been inserted into the letter yet. Notice that a new toolbar, Mail Merge, has been placed with the toolbars above your document.
Making that selection brings you back to a blank Word document. In other words, you will Edit Main Document. Of course there are no merge fields there. Recall that we started with a blank document. The worksheet opens in the background, and Word asks you to make one more selection. Making that selection will open the worksheet The only choice here is Entire Spreadsheet. After selecting the worksheet Word asks you to make a selection. Open the worksheet that contains the data needed for this form letter. Change the Files of type: box by clicking on the down arrow and scrolling down to MS Excel Worksheets.You will not see your saved worksheet yet. Navigate to the place where you saved the Excel worksheet.An Open Data Source dialog box will open and you must do two things. You have already created the data source, so choose Open Data Source from the drop down dialog box. The Mail Merge Helper box appears with choice 2 available now that you have made a selection. Click on the Create button and choose Form Letter from the drop down dialog box. As you make selections in this box other selections will become available. Go to the Tools menu and select Mail Merge. You may start the mail merge process before typing anything. It is not necessary to begin typing the form letter. If a new blank document does not automatically open, go to the File menu and select New. Create your own or copy what you see below: All columns will adjust in width to fit the data. Place the cursor on the light gray line between any two of the highlighted headings, and double-click. Place your cursor over the " A " in the column heading and drag to the right unto you reach the " E " column heading. Your worksheet will probably look somewhat like the one you see below: Do not worry if the cell is not wide enough. Press the Tab key to move to cell B1 and type "Last name." Continue until each of the field names above have been entered. Field names must be entered in the cells across row 1.
For this activity we will use the following field names: The field names you choose will be determined by the form letter you want to produce.
Common field names are First Name, Last Name, Telephone, and zip code. A database has field names for each type of information entered. The excel worksheet will take the place of a database. Remember to leave your browser window open until this lesson is finished. The first step will be to prepare the data source from which information will be inserted into the form letter. You have probably gotten one like that in the past. A form letter is one in which the body of the letter stays the same but specific information is inserted for/about several different individuals. Excel will be used for the data and Word will be used to create the form letter. Two Microsoft Office applications will be required for this task. Using Mail Merge Preparing a form letter with Word and Excel