Beginners Guide to doing a Mail Merge in MS Word
This guide assumes you already have a database or spreadsheet set up that contains the information you want to use.Also it's based on Word 97, but the procedure for mail merges hasn't changed much in later versions.Open a new document, and click on Mail Merge in the Tools menu.
In the Mail Merge helper window, to create a letter or list click Create….Form Letters.
Click on Active Window to create the Mail Merge in your new document
Click on Get Data….Open Data Source.
In the window that appears, find and open the database or spreadsheet
that has the information you want to use.
If the information is in a database you’ll be asked to select which
table you want to use within the database. Select the one you want and
click OK
To add fields to the document click on Insert Merge Field on the toolbar. You should get a drop down list of all the fields in the data source.
Normally a mail merge will have one record per page, so if you just
want to do a list you need insert the fields multiple times until the
end of the page, and use the Next Record command after each repetition.
If you are doing a letter this isn’t necessary
.
Once the document is set up with all the fields and any text and formatting
you want, you are ready to merge the data with the document.Click on
Tools…Mail Merge
Then click the Merge button under step 3 of the Mail Merge window.In
the Merge window, select Merge to: New document and click Merge.
Alternatively you could select Printer, but merging to a new document
gives you a chance to check that the final document is correct before
printing.
If you have a large number of records, the merge process may take a
while. Word shows you its progress at the bottom of the screen:
You should now have a finished merged document ready to print.