Special Edition Using Microsoft® Word 2000

Creating a Separate Header Source

Suppose you're using an external data source, such as a Word table or Excel worksheet, or data downloaded from a mainframe computer—but the first row of the data source contains data rather than merge field names. Or, what if you plan to perform many different mail merges with the same main document, but each one uses a different data source—and while the data sources contain similar information, they use different field names?

Because you need consistent field names to perform a mail merge, you have a problem—and Word provides a solution. You can create a separate header source document that Word can use rather than search for headers in your data sources.

A header source document is a Word document consisting ...