Using Queries

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Using Queries

The ability to query your data source is a grossly under-used feature of Word's mail merge. Quite simply, you can ask for the mail merge to only merge to certain records. Suppose you are a small business trying to get your name out into your local community. You've set up a plan to send out three consecutive letters-one every three months. If your prospects haven't contacted you by then, you'll drop them from the list. Here's one way to accomplish your goal.

Scenario

You created a mail merge and sent your business card with it to introduce yourself to local companies.

In your data source, add a column named 'First Letter' and enter the date that you sent the letter. Create another column called 'Contacted Me' and put the date that any of the prospects contacted you. So, let's suppose you sent 100 letters and 5 of those people contacted you.

You really want to get a response from those other 95 people, so you create a mail merge to send a letter that has a 10%-Off coupon attached. (Because you've already got those five people interested, there's no need to send them the coupon.)

You'll want to use a mail merge query to create letters to send only to those 95 people who have not yet contacted you, so just prior to merging the documents, you must choose only those who have no date in the Contacted Me field.

Refer to Figure 17-1 on how to 'query' the data sources for these values using Word 2002/XP.

Figure 17-1: Word 2002/XP Mail Merge Recipients Dialog Box

Refer to Figure 17-2 on how to 'query' the data sources for these values using Word 97/2000.

Figure 17-2: Word 97/2000 Query Options Dialog Box

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