Starting the Main Document

In this phase of the mail merge process, you tell Word which document you want to use as the main document.

Follow these steps to start your main document:

1. If you have an existing letter that you want to use for your form letter, open it now, and delete any parts of it (such as the name and address) that you don't want to include in the form letter. If you want to start a letter from scratch, start a new, blank document.

2. Save the document (use File, Save As if you've opened an existing document) with a name like Form Letter - Main to remind you that it is a main document.

   

   If you perform a lot of mail merges, you might want to create a separate folder for all your main documents to store these specialized documents separately from your other files. You could name this folder something like Mail Merge Documents. Word automatically uses a default folder named My Data Sources for your data source files.

   
   

3. Choose Tools, Letters and Mailings, Mail Merge to display the Mail Merge Wizard in the Mail Merge task pane.

4. In step 1 of the wizard (Select Document Type), mark the Letters button to indicate that you want to create a form letter (see Figure 14.1). (The remaining steps of the mail merge will differ depending on what type of document you choose here.)

   Figure 14.1. The Mail Merge Wizard guides you through the mail merge process.

   

5. Click Next: Starting Document at the bottom of the task pane.

6. In step 2 of the wizard (Select Starting Document), mark the Use the Current Document button (see Figure 14.2).

   Figure 14.2. Select your starting document in the Mail Merge task pane.

   

7. Click Next: Select Recipients at the bottom of the task pane.

Continue this process by defining the data source for the merge document in the section that follows .