Why would you need to do a mail merge with Microsoft Office word 2016? During your line of work, you might be required to create a single document and address it to a list of people. Some of the situations would be as follows
- Inviting different people to an event, example conferences, workshops and etc.
- Schools acceptance or offer letters to students or fees outstanding notices and etc.
- Club or association members related letters/information.
Microsoft Word 2016 has made it so simple to create just one document and then personally address it to different recipients so that each recipient will have personalized details of important information. For example, an offer letter issued to for students accepted to study in an institution. Certain piece of information on that letter musts be personalized to each student. The rest of the information in the letter will be standard or same but the following information has to be personalized to each student.
- His/her title (Mr.,Ms,Miss, etc)
- His/ her postal address
- Program he/she has been accepted into
- Fee for the program
If the accepted students list is less than 20 is manageable by inserting the above piece of information for each student in . However, if the student numbers is more than 100, it’s a tedious repetitive task. It doesn’t have to because Microsoft Word 2016 already has commands under Mailings tab to do a much faster way. Here are the steps to do it.
No# 1: Create the list or record of recipients in Microsoft Excel 2016.
It is important to create the list of recipients in Microsoft Excel 2016. For example used here, the list of students accepted by the institutions with the program and fees details as shown below. The records kept in Excel be easy to integrate into the offer letter.
For more information on mail merge using spreadsheet records, here is one good article form Microsoft office support site, Mail Merge Using An Excel Spreadsheet
No# 2: Prepare the Main Document
Prepare the main document, in this example the Offer letter. In the main document, leave blank spaces in places where the personal information can be inserted . As shown below, [blank spaces..] is needed for the address, title and full name, program information and fees. These are variable pieces of information that needs to be specific to each student while the rest of the information is general to every student.
No# 3: Integrate the Excel Student Records as recipients list.
Now, you are ready to integrate the Excel file into the main document. Click Mailings==>Use an existing list. From the Select Data source dialog box, look for the Excel file that contains the list of recipients and click OK. This will now connect the main document with the excel recipients records file and ready to insert the fields into the respective blank spaces .
No#4: Insert the Variable Data fields into the main document.
Insert the cursor where you want to insert the merged fields. The click Insert Merged Field command. All the available fields/columns names are ready for selection. Now it is just a matter of selecting the right merged field in the main document. Once fields are inserted, it should look like the following. If there two fields are inserted in the same line, separate them by pressing space between the fields.
No#5 Review and Finish Merged Results
Now, you can review the results and finish merging using the Review and Finish command group commands. These commands give you the following flexibility:
Review results so you can see exactly where the merged data fields fit in to make sure they fit in exactly where they are needed.
Search for a specific recipient. This function is helpful if document is served at the counter. It will reduce printing and packing work as document can be printed when an individual comes to pick it up only and rest can be emailed direct.
Can be emailed or printed directly. In order to email directly, the record file in excel must contain a email column with valid email address for each recipient.
Whenever the recipient list is updated, the merged fields automatically updates.
This is how simple; mail merge is in Microsoft Word 2016. So next time when you are faced with a task to send a document with personalized information, you can handle it much better with Microsoft Word Mailings tab command groups.
For more Microsoft Office Application tips check our specific posts here: Microsoft Office Tips