Create personalized letters for large groups using mail merge with MS Word and MS Excel

When you need to send personalized letters to a large group of different people the normal procedure of creating such letters would be time consuming and repetitive. Using a mail merge can help save time consumed in doing repetitive task of preparing personalized letters having similar content or purpose. 

I learned this time saving trick from one our directors 'Anil Shenoy' during the build up to our companies annual day celebrations and thought of sharing this useful stuff with others. To create a mail merge follow the following steps: 


1) Create an excel sheet with the data to be used for sending mail merge. The data used in this example looks like this:

2) Open a word document

3) Navigate to Mailings --> Start Mail Merge --> Letters
 

4) Navigate to Mailings --> Select recipients --> Use Existing List

5) Select data source dialog will open

6) Select data source as excel sheet 

7) Point to excel sheet that was created at the beginning and select the sheet from the following dialogue

8) Add the template text for the letter as follows

9) Now place the cursor in front of the text ‘TO:’ 

10)  Click Insert Merge Field --> First_Name

11) The field will be added in front of the text ‘TO:’

12) Similarly add all the fields in the appropriate places in the word document. he document will look like this after all the fields are added

·        

13) Now click on ‘Preview Results’ and letter is ready with the data from excel sheet

14) Now you can click on ‘Finish & Merge’ to print letters to all the users in the excel sheet.