Mail Merge

This week we started to learn about creating form letters and how to use the mail merge tool in Microsoft Word. First of all a form letter is a letter that has pretty much the same text body but some aspects of it are changed. Usually this would be the name of the person etc.

Example Form Letters:

Dear Riku,
You are invited to the Stars Banquet on Thursday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi



Dear Kyoko,
You are invited to the VIP Dance on Friday night. We would really appreciate it if you would attend. Please let us know if you will be coming ASAP.

Sincerely,

Mr. and Mrs. Yamaguchi

As you can see the two letters here are very similar and only the name of the recipent, the occasion and date have been changed.

Form letters make it much easier for us to get people the same message without having to write or type out all the information each time. So let's say you have thank you letters, or invitations to send out you can easily send out the same letter with just a few things changed quite easily using Microsoft Word and this is how to do it!

Mail Merging Instructions:

1) First of all open up a word document and click tools>mail merge.

2) Now a pop-up window should be present on your screen. Under 'main document' click 'create and click 'form letters'.

3) After you have done that another pop-up window will open and it will ask you if you would like to create your form letter using the already active window (the one that you have opened) or a new document. Choose the one that you are most comfortable with, I myself find the active window option easier.

4) Now as you can see you have unlocked the next part of creating a form letter. Under 'data source' click 'get data' and click 'create data source.

5) Another pop-up window should be open now. This pop-up window will allow you to create the options for the changing parts of the text in your form letter. These changing parts are called 'fields'. As you can probably see in your pop-up window you are allowed to enter a field name or choose one of the existing ones. I suggest creating your own. You can make fields for the name of the person, an address or anything else that you would like to change in your text. Type in your field name and click ok to create as many fields as you wish.
*Note: Remember to remove the existing field names by selecting them and clicking 'remove field name' and then create your own!

6) After you have done that another pop-up window will open up, which you will use to save your document. Type in a name for your file that you will easily remember and press okay.

7) For this step...yes another pop-up window! What a surprise! Click 'edit data source' on this pop-up window. Now you can enter in the specifics for the fields! Each time you fill out all the fields for one letter, this one set of data will be known as a record.

Example:

Name: Cherry
Favourite food: cherries

Name: Candy
Favourite food: candy

This is an example of what you would do when you enter in specifics for the fields. Note that my fields are the name and favourite food and not the information I have entered. Above I have created two different recordsl

8) Once you have created as many of these as you want, click ok. Now you can type in your message, but wait! It isn't like any other message. You type your message but everytime you want to put down one of the things that will vary in your form letter click 'insert merge field' (this should be displayed right below all the other toolbars as an extra tool bar at this stage). You choose the field you want and click and then continue with your message placing the fields where necessary.
*Note: If you ever wish to edit your data source you can always go into tools>mail merge>edit.

9) When you're all done with that the last thing to do is click tools>mail merge>merge. A new document with all the different letters with different specifics should open up. Now you can do whatever you want with them! Wasn't that much easier than typing them all out?

--Amna