MACinations July 03 - Club Mac's magazine

Mail Merge Tutorial

Suppose you frequently have to write letters to a list of people. Say, for example, you have to write 200 letters, and each one needs to address donors by name and thank them for a specific donation amount. Rather than create each letter individually, is there a way to list their names/donations/other info, load the printer with paper, and have Word do the tedious parts?

The means to imposing this thankless drudgery on Word is the Data Merge Manager. To begin, create your form letter -- leaving blanks for areas that you'd like customized. For example, you might try something like this:

Dear _________,

Although you've got more money than you know what to do with, we appreciate that you've deigned to give us _______ -- a pitifully small portion of your vast fortune. Your donation will allow us to purchase ______ bottles of the liniment favoured by members of our orchestra. Your liniment will be featured in the performance of __________, 2003 and worn by the ________ violinist from the left.

Thank you for your munificent support.

Tunefully yours, Biff

With the form letter complete, select Data Merge Manager from Word v.X Tools menu (It’s under File menu in Word 2001). In the resulting Data Merge Manager window, click Create under the Main Document entry. Select Form Letters from the Create submenu. The letter you created has now been designated the master form letter.

		Next, click Get Data under the Data Source and select New Data Source from the submenu. A Create Data Source window appears that contains a list of preconfigured field names -- first name, last name, address, etc. Highlight any fields you don't want in your document and click the Remove Field Name button. Add any fields you do want -- the donation amount and number of bottles of liniment from our example, for instance -- and click OK. (Note: Field names can't contain a space.) In the resulting Save dialogue box, name your data source document and click Save.
(Alternatively you can use a previously prepared list of addresses, get the data from a Filemaker Pro data base or use the Address Book as a source of data.)

A Data Form window will now appear that contains the fields you've chosen for your document. Key in the information you need for each letter -- creating new records for each new letter you wish to generate.

In the Merge Field area of the Data Merge Manager window you'll see a list of all the fields in your data source document. Drag the appropriate field name into your form letter. For example, drag the entry titled Donation to the place in your form letter where you call out the amount of money the donor sent your way. If you've entered underscores or nonsense characters for placeholders, delete them.

When you've entered all your data, simply choose an output method -- printer, separate document, or email -- in the Merge section of the Data Merge Manager window and let your Mac and printer churn out your newly personalized correspondence.