Mail and Data Merges Using Word 2007

Section 1. What Is a Mail Merge?

Mail merge is a term that can strike fear into the heart of many Word users. Once a tedious and frustrating procedure, it has become a very efficient tool for creating mass mailings like those you probably get in your mailbox every day. The process itself is fairly simple—a form letter (main document) is combined with a source (data file) that contains all of the necessary information to produce a personalized letter for each person in the source.

Mail merge combines a main document with a list of database records to create customized copies of the main document for each record. The most common type of mail merge, of course, is a mailing. Mail merging was originally developed to create form letters, like the kind ...