Chapter 35 -- Performing Mail Merges

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Chapter 35

If it's part of your job to create marketing mailings, surveys, broadcast e-mail messages, or distributed faxes, you'll be pleased to know that mail merge has been totally revamped in Microsoft Word 2002. Mail merge enables you to create a document once and use it many times, which cuts down on the time you spend creating and sending documents and enables you to use the data you've saved elsewhere, in a mailing list database, an address list, or your Microsoft Outlook Contacts list. You might use mail merge to create and send projects like these:

• A direct mail campaign sent to your top 1,000 customers announcing a new service
• An e-mail press release announcing a new product release
• Mailing labels to affix to catalogs you send to new customers
• A form letter announcing a new rate increase
• An address listing of all clients in your various databases

This chapter introduces you to the new mail merge features in Word and shows you how to master the techniques for individual merge projects. This means that you can capitalize on the work you've done by applying the "create-it-once, use-it-many-times" techniques mail merge offers.