Force Byte
How to use Mail Merging in Word (1)
After the introduction of the various types of computer viruses, I would like to talk about Mail Merging in Word step-by-step.
Suppose you would like to send out several invitation letters that are almost exactly the same, how can you make them look more personal? Certainly each letter bearing the name of the recipient will do. Right now you may think that you need only to make several copies of the letter and then put in the name of the recipient one by one. While this sounds a good idea, you can achieve the same result without the least effort by using Mail Merging in Word.
Steps in Mail Merging
To perform Mail Merging, you only need three steps as follows:
1. Create the Data Source. It is a file that contains all column headers and data used in the Form Letter (or called the "Main Document").
2. Create the Main Document, which contains all column headers in the Data Source.
3. Perform the Mail Merging.
The figure below summarises the process of Main Merging:
In creating a data source, you may choose to combine all column headers and data needed for several Mail Merging into a file or to create a new file each time when you perform Mail Merging.
Now let me show you how to make those invitation letters as above using Mail Merging in brief. First we have to create a file in Word and insert into it a table with four columns and data (See Figure 1).
Next time, I will start to explain each step of Mail Merging in detail. Don't miss it.
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Then we create the main document in Word (See Figure 2). You can see that it is just an ordinary Word document, except that I have inserted the column headers that appear in the data source into the appropriate places (See the circles in Figure 2).
After performing the Mail Merging, you can get five invitation letters with different names of recipients (See Figure 3).
If you get the data source and the main document right, you will be able to make a series of form letters, mailing labels, envelopes and catalogues, etc. in a short while using Mail Merging.
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