Hour 14. Generating a Mail Merge

Hour 14. Generating a Mail Merge

When you want to send a letter to a large number of people, Word's mail merge feature lets you sidestep the mind-numbing task of personalizing the document for each recipient. You prepare two documents: the form letter and a list of the recipients' names and addresses. Word then "merges" the information from the list into the form letter to generate the mass mailing. In this hour, you step through the standard mail merge procedure from start to finish to produce a form letter, and then you learn how to merge four other types of documents: envelopes, labels, directories, and e-mail messages. You also explore a few other options for customizing a mail merge.

The highlights of this hour include

• Understanding mail merge terminology

• Performing a standard mail merge to create a form letter

• Merging envelopes, labels, directories, and e-mail messages

• Merging records in a particular order

• Merging only selected records