Office 2013 Bible: The Comprehensive Tutorial Resource

Chapter 10

Data Documents and Mail Merge

IN THIS CHAPTER

Reviewing data sources you can use with Word

Formatting source data

Attaching a data source to a data document

Editing data

Assembling a data document

Merging to a printer

Using the Mail Merge Wizard

This chapter shows you how to create specialized types of documents — such as envelopes, labels, form letters, mass e-mail, catalogs, and directories — by combining a main document with a list called a data source. Merging can save a lot of time once you are familiar with the process, but it does require careful setup for both the data source and the main document. This chapter covers how to bring your data and document together without errors so you can save time and let Word do some of the heavy lifting for you.

Previewing the Mail Merge Process

Let’s say you need to send a letter about a new product to 20 clients, and you already have the client names and addresses typed into Excel. Rather than manually retyping each name and address into a separate copy of the letter, you can write the letter, specify where the name and address information from the list should go, and perform the mail merge to create 20 versions of the letter — each personally addressed for a specific recipient. Even better, you can quickly create a matching set of addressed envelopes or labels to use for the mailing.

You also can use mail merge to create updateable versions of other long documents. For example, let’s say you maintain a directory of contact ...