Running the Merge

Running the Merge

In this final phase of the mail merge process, you merge the main document with the data source to produce your letters . The first two steps in the following list are optionalthey let you confirm that the data will merge correctly before you actually perform the merge.

1. After completing step 5 in the previous section, click the View Merged Data button on the Mail Merge toolbar.

2. Word displays the data from the first record (see Figure 10.7). Click the Next Record button on the Mail Merge toolbar. (These Record buttons work exactly like those in the Data Form.)

   Figure 10.7. Optionally use the View Merged Data button to check for errors in your data and merge fields.

   

3. Word displays the data from the next record. Look at a few more to see whether the data is merging correctly. If you find any mistakes in the data, click the Edit Data Source button to display the Data Form, revise the data, and then click OK. When you're finished, click the View Merged Data button again to turn it off.

4. Click the Merge to New Document button on the Mail Merge toolbar to merge the documents.

   If you're merging a large number of letters, you may want to click the Merge to Printer button instead. This button also performs the merge, but the letters are sent directly to the printer instead of appearing onscreen in a new document. (A document containing hundreds of merged letters would be hundreds of pages long, and if your computer doesn't have much memory, it may balk at the task of displaying the document onscreen.)

   
   

5. The merged letters appear in a document entitled Form Letters1 (see Figure 10.8). Scroll down the document. The letters print on separate pages because Word separates them with next page section breaks. (If your main document is a multiple-page letter, the section break comes at the bottom of the last page of each letter.) Click the Print button in the Standard toolbar to print the letters.

   Figure 10.8. The Form Letters document contains all your merged letters, separated by next page section breaks.

   

6. Close the Form Letters1 document without saving it. (You don't need to save the merged letters because you can always run the merge again.) Then click the taskbar button of the main document to switch to it if necessary, and close it as well.

Everything else you can do with mail merge builds on the procedure you've just completed.

Running Subsequent Merges

When you want to merge the same main document and data source in the future, just open the main document with the usual File, Open command, and click the Merge to New Document or Merge to Printer button in the Mail Merge toolbar. That's all there is to it.

If you want to merge an existing main document with a different data source than the one you used with it previously, you can attach a new data source. Open the main document, choose Tools, Mail Merge, and click the Get Data button.

Then, if you want to create the new data source from scratch, choose Create Data Source and continue with the steps described earlier to run the merge (starting with "Creating and Saving the Data Source").

If you want to attach an existing data source, click Open Data Source, select the data source in the Open Data Source dialog box, and click the Open button. Back in the Mail Merge Helper dialog box, click the Merge button, and then click the Merge button again in the Merge dialog box to run the merge.

If you attach a data source that has different field names than the ones referenced in the merge fields in your main document, you'll get errors when you try to run the merge. To prevent this from happening, check the merge fields in your main document. If they don't match the data source, delete them and insert them again using the Insert Merge Field toolbar button (this button always displays the merge fields in the currently attached data source).