1. Creating Personalized LettersCreating a simple letter for Mail Merge| 00:00 | Mail merge requires two documents.
| | 00:03 | The first is a Word document that contains text
used in every single letter or e-mail message.
| | 00:09 | Let's look at an existing letter and
decide what portions of it would be used in
| | 00:14 | every letter and what
portions are variable text.
| | 00:17 | I'm in the middle of creating a
letter that I need to send out to invite
| | 00:20 | people to a meeting,
| | 00:21 | thinking, "Oh, I'll just copy
and paste here, different names and
| | 00:25 | different address blocks."
| | 00:26 | Then I realize, "Wow!
| | 00:27 | I should be turning this
into a mail merge document.
| | 00:29 | It would be much faster and much easier."
| | 00:32 | So, I'm going to highlight the text
that would be different in each letter.
| | 00:36 | You don't need to do this to do mail merge;
| | 00:39 | however, you do need to understand what
variable text is because we'll need to
| | 00:43 | get that information from a data source.
| | 00:45 | First, we have the date. Everyone's
letter will be sent on the same date.
| | 00:49 | Next, we have an address block that
includes names and business addresses, and
| | 00:54 | that will be variable text.
| | 00:56 | Now, we have Dear, person's first name.
| | 00:59 | The first name will be different.
| | 01:00 | This letter will say, Annette, and the
next one will say Joe, and the next one
| | 01:04 | will say Jeff, and so on.
| | 01:05 | But as we add this variable text later,
we'll also make the Dear variable.
| | 01:11 | The reason is we might have a letter
where there's absolutely no person listed,
| | 01:15 | all that's listed is a company name, and
we'll want to not have letters sent out
| | 01:19 | that say, Dear, blank if there is no name there.
| | 01:22 | So, later on, we'll learn
that that's also variable text.
| | 01:26 | Further down we have a place that we're
thanking Annette in advance for her attendance.
| | 01:31 | So, another piece of variable text - we
want to thank each person by name, and
| | 01:35 | by putting that close to the end of the
letter, it actually makes it feel more personal.
| | 01:40 | Not, thank you for coming, whoever you
are, but thank you Annette, so she'll be
| | 01:44 | more motivated to come to our meeting.
| | 01:46 | Now that we've identified the variable
text, we know all the rest of the text in
| | 01:50 | the letter is constant text.
| | 01:52 | It will be the same for every single recipient.
| | 01:55 | We're ready to take this letter and say,
yes, we could use this for a mail merge.
| | 01:59 | So, we'll go to the Mailings tab,
choose Start Mail Merge and say, we're going
| | 02:05 | to use this to create letters.
| | 02:08 | Not much happened, but this letter has now
been identified to Word as a mail merge letter.
| | 02:13 | If we'd wanted to treat it as a regular
document, we'd actually have to go back
| | 02:17 | to Start Mail Merge and turn it
back into a normal Word document.
| | 02:21 | Since this is a mail merge letter,
let's now save it with the new name that will
| | 02:25 | remind us that we're using it for mail merge.
| | 02:28 | Let's choose File > Save As, and let's save
this and put "merge" at the start of it's name:
| | 02:33 | Merge-Simple Letter and click Save.
| | 02:40 | Now that we've identified all of
the variable text, and therefore, the
| | 02:43 | constant text in our letter, we're
ready to move on to the next stage of
| | 02:47 | Microsoft Word mail merge.
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| Choosing or creating a data source| 00:00 | Word mail merge uses two files: a
primary document, like the one on the screen
| | 00:05 | that's always created in Word, and d
data source, which is structured, variable
| | 00:10 | data that will be merged into the
highlighted areas of this primary document.
| | 00:15 | With Word mail merge, we can choose
data from a wide range of data sources.
| | 00:20 | There are three choices listed on the
Mailing tab of the Ribbon, in reverse
| | 00:25 | order of usefulness:
| | 00:27 | Type New List, Use Existing List,
and Select from Outlook Contacts.
| | 00:32 | Let's take a look at those three different
types of data sources for our Word mail merge.
| | 00:38 | It's always better to use
an existing data source.
| | 00:40 | You'll only create a new list if
the data that you need doesn't exist
| | 00:44 | anywhere else, because otherwise
you'll need to maintain at least one, if not
| | 00:48 | both of those lists.
| | 00:50 | So Word makes it easy to connect to
almost any data source on your computer and
| | 00:54 | any data source on your network
that you have permission to access.
| | 00:58 | For example, if the people you're
sending this letter to are already in your
| | 01:02 | Outlook contacts, or a Contacts Folder
in your Exchange Public Folders, you must
| | 01:07 | use Outlook as your data source.
| | 01:09 | Outlook has great data, and the
chances are good that that data is up-to-date
| | 01:13 | because you use it for other purposes.
| | 01:16 | So any contacts folder will do.
| | 01:18 | Then you can choose an existing list.
| | 01:20 | If you don't have information in
your Outlook contacts, take a look, for
| | 01:23 | example, at data maintained in an
Excel spreadsheet, or data in a good Access
| | 01:28 | database, or any other database.
| | 01:31 | For example, you might have client
information or vendor information on an
| | 01:35 | enterprise database
maintained in SQL Server or Oracle.
| | 01:39 | When you need to use databases like
this, your enterprise databases, you'll
| | 01:43 | probably need to have a conversation
with your IT or IS department about how
| | 01:47 | they can set up a read-only
connection to those databases for you to use.
| | 01:52 | If the data you need for your mail
merge doesn't exist anywhere else, then you
| | 01:56 | can create a New List.
| | 01:57 | An example of this would be, someone
hands you a stack of applications that were
| | 02:01 | filled out on paper;
| | 02:03 | they don't already exist
electronically, so you may as well create them.
| | 02:07 | If you type a new list for a mail
merge data source in Microsoft Word, it's
| | 02:11 | actually stored in a small
Access database when you save it.
| | 02:15 | Later on, you can edit this data in
Word, or you can edit it directly
| | 02:19 | in Microsoft Access.
| | 02:22 | After you select your data source and
connect to the file, you'll save this
| | 02:26 | primary document again, and in doing
so, you will save the connection to
| | 02:30 | your data source file.
| | 02:32 | No matter what data source you choose,
the data source might have more records
| | 02:36 | than you want to use in any specific
mail merge, but don't let that bother you.
| | 02:41 | After you decide what type of data
source you want to use, and connect to your
| | 02:45 | data source, you can then sort and
filter to use some, or all of the records in
| | 02:50 | your data source, in your Word mail merge.
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| Opening an existing File| 00:00 | When you create a new mail merge
letter, eventually you have to close it, so
| | 00:04 | you'll want to reopen it again, and
when you do, you're going to be prompted.
| | 00:08 | And I'd like to show you the prompts
you're going to see so that you understand them.
| | 00:12 | You don't need to try to follow along
with this; just watch and I'll try to go
| | 00:15 | through it fairly quickly, so
that you can see how this works.
| | 00:19 | Whether I double-click to open a file in
a folder or I go to Word backstage and
| | 00:23 | choose to open a folder,
| | 00:25 | when I open a mail merge letter, as soon as
Word starts to open it, the letter says, hey!
| | 00:30 | wait a second; I'm connected
to a data source somewhere else.
| | 00:34 | And so Word then will prompt you to say,
do you know that this letter intends to
| | 00:38 | go grab some information from a data source?
| | 00:41 | It says, opening this letter will run the
following SQL command, and it shows you
| | 00:45 | a SQL Select statement. Don't worry about that.
| | 00:49 | Basically, what it's saying
is it's going to a database.
| | 00:52 | Now if you've already set up a data
source and connected to it, even if you
| | 00:56 | haven't added a single merge field to
your letter, you're going to see this.
| | 01:00 | If you click Show Help, it will
actually give you some help written in user-
| | 01:03 | understandable English, which is a
nice thing, but here is the bottom line.
| | 01:07 | If you want to keep the connection to
the database, you need to choose Yes.
| | 01:11 | If you choose No, what will happen
is the information that was is in the
| | 01:16 | database, in the very first record,
will be placed into your letter, and the
| | 01:20 | connection then will be broken.
| | 01:22 | So in other words, I want this to
keep being a merged letter, is Yes. Never-
| | 01:26 | mind that this is a merge letter, and I never
want to use it that way again, would be No.
| | 01:31 | So if we choose Yes, the letter just opens.
| | 01:33 | Let's do this again, and this time
let's choose No. And when I choose No, it
| | 01:40 | looks exactly the same;
| | 01:42 | however, when I go to Mailings here,
you'll notice that I really need to start
| | 01:45 | selecting recipients again.
| | 01:47 | This isn't a merged letter any longer.
| | 01:49 | It's a subtle difference, and if you
know where you merge data source is, it's
| | 01:53 | probably not even that big of a deal.
| | 01:54 | But if you don't, or if you've done a
lot of work putting merged fields into
| | 01:58 | this letter, as we'll be doing in the next few
videos, you won't want to throw that work away.
| | 02:03 | If you make a mistake here, you can
always just close and hope that the next
| | 02:07 | time you open it up, you'll be prompted again.
| | 02:09 | I want to show you another possibility.
| | 02:11 | This is a different merged letter
that I've set up, and when I open it up it
| | 02:14 | says, opening this document
will run the following SQL command.
| | 02:18 | This letter is attached to some data
in a data source called Vendor Apps.
| | 02:23 | I don't know if it's a SQL data source,
Excel, Access; it doesn't really matter.
| | 02:27 | I'm going to say Yes, and oh,
my gosh! Here is an error.
| | 02:31 | Now when you see this error, what you
can know immediately is that the data
| | 02:35 | source that this letter is
connected to can't be found or is locked.
| | 02:40 | So if it's a data source that is an
Excel spreadsheet, it's possible somebody
| | 02:44 | else has that spreadsheet open for editing.
| | 02:46 | If the data source is the SQL database
that you've connected to, well, then the odds
| | 02:50 | are pretty good that something has
changed about the database. But the easiest
| | 02:55 | way that this happens, actually, is that
the database has moved, or that you have
| | 03:00 | moved the letter relative to the database.
| | 03:02 | For example, let's say that you have an Excel
spreadsheet and a letter in the same folder.
| | 03:08 | You decide that you're going to share
that letter with other people, so you move
| | 03:11 | it to a network share,
| | 03:12 | while the letter, all along, has said,
just go out in the same folder and
| | 03:15 | grab your data source.
| | 03:16 | Now that it's sitting up on the network
share without the data source, it's still
| | 03:19 | trying to look in the same folder.
| | 03:21 | So what I can do, if I have control of
this data source or if I can find it, is
| | 03:26 | I can click OK, and this Data
Link Properties dialog box opens.
| | 03:30 | Now, this is just impossible to
work with. Don't worry about it.
| | 03:34 | Let's go ahead and just click OK, and
it's going to throw the same error again.
| | 03:37 | Don't let that bother you. Click OK
again, and it will give you a better
| | 03:41 | easier-to-use dialog box that let's
you just click and browse and find your
| | 03:46 | data source, rather than entering the bunch
of connection information or anything else.
| | 03:49 | I want to show you this
again, just so you've seen it.
| | 03:53 | We're going to go ahead, and we're going
to open up this letter, again. Say Yes,
| | 03:59 | because we want to keep it as a merged
letter, throw the error, tell it OK, tell
| | 04:04 | it OK, the error appears again, and
now you can click the Find Data Source
| | 04:09 | button and locate your data source -
a lot easier to do, than trying to enter a
| | 04:13 | lot of complex information.
| | 04:15 | Once you've found your data source
and opened it, your letter will be fine.
| | 04:19 | If you can't find the data source at
this time, then simply close the dialog,
| | 04:23 | say OK, and close the letter.
| | 04:25 | Go do whatever research is necessary
to locate that data source and determine
| | 04:29 | that you can connect to it, before you
open the letter again, so you're ready to go.
| | 04:33 | That's what you need to know to open an
existing mail merge letter in Word 2010.
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| Using Mail Merge with Outlook contacts| 00:00 | Of the hundreds of thousands of mail
merges completed in offices each day, the
| | 00:04 | vast majority use name and address
information about people, the kind of data
| | 00:09 | that you and I would
normally store in Microsoft Outlook.
| | 00:12 | Let's see how easy it is to use Outlook
contacts as a data source for our mail merge.
| | 00:18 | Here is our letter, and we'll be picking
up name and address information for use
| | 00:21 | in the address block and in the body
of the letter in the areas that I have
| | 00:25 | highlighted in yellow, because they
will be replaced with placeholders.
| | 00:29 | If I want to choose Microsoft Outlook
Contacts as my data source, all I do is
| | 00:34 | choose, on the Mailings tab, and Start
mail merge, from the Select Recipients
| | 00:38 | dropdown, Select from Outlook Contacts.
| | 00:41 | Microsoft Word goes out and asks
Outlook, what kind of contacts folders do
| | 00:45 | you have there for me?
| | 00:46 | And Outlook reports that it has two:
| | 00:48 | one is the Contacts folder that is
standard with office, and the second is the
| | 00:52 | Suggested Contacts folder
that Outlook creates itself.
| | 00:56 | But I have an additional folder here
called Current Vendors. Why doesn't it
| | 01:00 | show up on my list?
| | 01:01 | You will notice that I am looking at my
Outlook folder here, and obviously yours
| | 01:05 | will look different, so go ahead and
follow along using your Outlook folders or
| | 01:10 | simply watch as I go through
the rest of this demonstration.
| | 01:14 | If I look at the Contacts folder, or any
contacts folder in Microsoft Outlook, and
| | 01:18 | right-click and choose Properties,
there is a tab called Outlook Address Book.
| | 01:23 | For my default contacts folder, this
always shows up as an e-mail address book.
| | 01:28 | I can't turn this off.
| | 01:30 | However, when new contacts folders are
created, they are not set up that way.
| | 01:35 | The assumption is that you will
not use them as e-mail address books.
| | 01:38 | So if I would like to use my list of
Current Vendors in a mail merge, first I
| | 01:42 | need to go over to Outlook, right-click,
choose Properties, choose the Outlook
| | 01:47 | Address Book tab and say, show this
folder as an e-mail Address Book that I
| | 01:51 | could use in mail merge and click OK.
| | 01:54 | We will be back to Outlook here in a
second, but let's go over to Word, cancel
| | 01:59 | this and once again say, select
recipients from Outlook contacts, and you will
| | 02:03 | notice here is my Current
Vendors list. It's that quick.
| | 02:07 | All I need to do is say, make
this visible from mail merge;
| | 02:10 | it's an Outlook Address Book.
| | 02:12 | If I had a stack of information on
paper someone handed me, and it was name
| | 02:16 | and address information that I wanted to use
in a mail merge, I would put it in Outlook.
| | 02:20 | I wouldn't put it anywhere else.
| | 02:21 | People belong here.
| | 02:23 | So let's say that somebody has given me
a stack of applicants, and I would like
| | 02:28 | to add them. I don't want
to put them in my contacts.
| | 02:30 | I don't want to put them in Current Vendors.
| | 02:32 | They are applicants to become vendors.
| | 02:34 | So what I want to do is go to
Contacts and create a new folder.
| | 02:38 | I am going to give this
folder a name: Applicants.
| | 02:41 | I am going to make sure that the
folder contains dropdown has Contact Items
| | 02:46 | selected, and I can either create a
subfolder of one of the existing folders,
| | 02:51 | like a subfolder of Current Vendors, or
I can choose my mailbox, and it will put
| | 02:57 | it out at the same level as my Contacts folder.
| | 02:59 | But I am actually going to put this
under Current Vendors, and click OK.
| | 03:04 | Now I have new folder called
Applicants. If I right-click and check its
| | 03:07 | Properties, go to Outlook Address Book,
| | 03:10 | it says, Show this
folder as e-mail Address Book,
| | 03:12 | that's all set, in part because Current Vendors was an
e-mail Address Book, and I am going to say OK.
| | 03:16 | Now let's go back to Microsoft Word, and
when we select from Outlook Contacts, I
| | 03:23 | have Applicants and Current Vendors,
the two Address Books that I have just
| | 03:27 | added, simply by clicking that check box.
| | 03:30 | If you are an Outlook power user, most
of your mail merge letters and labels
| | 03:34 | will use Outlook as your data source.
| | 03:37 | So you want to get used to being able
to go in and change those address book
| | 03:40 | settings, then choose Select from
Outlook Contacts, select the Address Book that
| | 03:45 | you want to use, and from here, you can
either choose specific folks you want to
| | 03:51 | include in a mail merge, you can use
everyone in the mail merge, you can sort
| | 03:56 | using the column headings here in the
Mail Merge Recipients dialog box, or you
| | 04:01 | can filter, to say, for example, that
I am only looking to send a letter to
| | 04:06 | folks who are in the State of Ohio,
so we will go find the Business Address
| | 04:09 | State is Equal to Ohio, and just
another way to trim down a subset.
| | 04:15 | Now I have a small group of people. All
of them are in this contacts folder and
| | 04:20 | all of them are in the State of Ohio.
| | 04:23 | If you have been using Outlook for
e-mail only and you don't use it to manage
| | 04:27 | contacts, then you are missing some of
the power of Outlook that will really help
| | 04:31 | you when you mail merge in Microsoft Word.
| | 04:34 | If you use Outlook, maintaining your
contacts there will give you a great head
| | 04:38 | start on mail merge in Microsoft Word.
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| Creating a new data source for Mail Merge| 00:00 | If the variable data you want to use
for mail merge - names and addresses or
| | 00:05 | part numbers and inventory items, for
example - doesn't already exist in any
| | 00:09 | electronic format, you can create a new data
source for mail merge right here in Word 2010.
| | 00:14 | I want to start by stressing that you
should not create a new data source if the
| | 00:19 | data already exists.
| | 00:21 | There is always a way to get the data to
Excel or to Outlook so that you can use it.
| | 00:25 | However, if you have a stack of forms
that people filled out and you need to
| | 00:29 | enter them somewhere,
this is a great way to do it.
| | 00:31 | We are going to choose Select
Recipients on the Mailings tab in Word and then
| | 00:36 | choose Type New List.
| | 00:38 | When we do, the New Address List
dialog box opens, and it's waiting for us to
| | 00:42 | enter some information,
so we can easily do that.
| | 00:46 | We can enter all the folks that
we need to send this letter to,
| | 00:52 | simply typing all the information.
| | 00:54 | You will notice we have fields for
Address, City, State, ZIP Code, Home Phone,
| | 00:57 | Work Phone, Email Address, and then if
we keep tabbing, it comes all the way
| | 01:01 | back to the beginning.
| | 01:02 | If you don't want to fill in all those
fields, for example perhaps you are just
| | 01:05 | putting in enough information to
create some nametags, then you can simply
| | 01:11 | click New Entry to drop down a line
and enter as many items as you wish.
| | 01:16 | Now this is initially set up to
collect basic contact information.
| | 01:21 | You can, however, customize the
columns if you wish, renaming the fields.
| | 01:25 | You can also add new fields.
| | 01:27 | So, for example, if we needed to have
the kind of field on a name tags that
| | 01:31 | says someone who is a member since
a particular year, we could put in
| | 01:35 | MembershipYear as a field.
| | 01:38 | That will appear wherever we had selected.
| | 01:40 | So if we wanted to move it up or down
we could, and if we don't have titles, we
| | 01:44 | could simply delete that.
| | 01:46 | It says any information contained
in this field will be deleted as well.
| | 01:49 | That's a stock prompt. Not that you
shouldn't look at it, but this is not
| | 01:54 | telling you that there is
information in the title field.
| | 01:56 | It's simply saying if there is,
and you delete it, it will be gone.
| | 01:59 | So we will say, Yes, and now we have
the ability to put in the MembershipYear
| | 02:04 | for each person and use that
information later in a mail merge.
| | 02:10 | When I close this New Address List
dialog box, I am going to be prompted to
| | 02:15 | provide a name for this set of data.
| | 02:18 | So we are going to call this Members,
and notice that it will be saved as a
| | 02:23 | Microsoft Office Address List.
| | 02:27 | When I go back and say I'd like to edit
the Recipient List, it opens it up again
| | 02:31 | in the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box.
| | 02:34 | But you might notice that
the data source is a .mdb file.
| | 02:37 | This is a Microsoft Database
or an Access Database file type.
| | 02:42 | So I can actually open this data
source in Access, where it is a single table
| | 02:46 | access database and edit it there, or
use queries to do some bulk editing,
| | 02:51 | rather than edit it here only in
this Mail Merge Recipients List.
| | 02:55 | This sort of looks like the kind of
tool you'd use for a short, little list, but
| | 02:59 | because this is stored in Access, and
I have access then to that power of a
| | 03:04 | robust database engine, I can store a
lot of information in here if I wish to.
| | 03:09 | So edit here or edit in Access; either way.
| | 03:13 | If you already have a data source in
Outlook, Excel, Access or elsewhere that
| | 03:18 | you can use or expand and use,
don't create a new data set in Word.
| | 03:23 | But if you need to create a data source,
it is quick and easy to set it up in
| | 03:27 | Word 2010, a great data source that
you can use here or use an Access.
| | 03:32 | Once you set it up, after that, it's just typing.
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| Using Mail Merge with an Excel table| 00:00 | Most organizations maintain a lot of data
in Microsoft Excel, and it's easy to see why.
| | 00:06 | Excel is incredibly powerful and yet
simple to use when you want to enter, sort,
| | 00:11 | filter and analyze data.
| | 00:13 | Let's see how we can use Microsoft
Excel as a data source for our mail merge.
| | 00:18 | We have our letter open, with the text
that will be variable text highlighted.
| | 00:22 | Let's go ahead and open an Excel workbook.
| | 00:24 | We will go to Select Recipients > Use
Existing List, and I am going to go open my
| | 00:30 | Exercises folder in Chapter 1
and select the Vendors Workbook.
| | 00:36 | When I open the workbook, there are
two different tables listed, but these
| | 00:40 | aren't really tables;
| | 00:41 | they are worksheets.
| | 00:42 | I know they are worksheets, because
they have a dollar sign at the end of their
| | 00:46 | name, and it says that the first row of
data contains column headers for both of these.
| | 00:50 | There are some column headers, so
that's great. Now, I am going to open up this
| | 00:54 | first data set, which is called Current.
| | 00:57 | When I click on Edit Recipient List,
you will notice that the Data Source is
| | 01:01 | listed as the workbook Vendors.xls,
and then we have, at the top here, field
| | 01:05 | names or column headings that were
picked up out of that data source:
| | 01:09 | Last, First, Email, Name of Company.
| | 01:12 | If you scroll across, you will notice
this is a nice data source. Every column
| | 01:16 | has a heading, the data looks like the
data we would expect, and then out to the
| | 01:20 | end, we start getting F10, F11, F12.
| | 01:24 | These are field names.
| | 01:25 | They will keep going as long as we
actually have space, and this is simply the
| | 01:29 | unnamed columns that we have.
| | 01:31 | We don't have any data in those
columns, so we don't really care.
| | 01:34 | This all works for us.
| | 01:35 | Let's now take a look at the other
data set that we have in this same workbook
| | 01:40 | inside of Vendors.xls.
| | 01:41 | We will go back to Select Recipients
> Use Existing List, and return to the
| | 01:48 | Exercises folder on the desktop and
open Vendors again, and this time we are
| | 01:53 | going to choose the second
worksheet, which is called Pending.
| | 01:56 | I am going to click OK and look at the
Recipient List, and one of the things I
| | 02:01 | will notice is that this worksheet is
actually more like most of the worksheets
| | 02:05 | you will probably use.
| | 02:06 | The data doesn't start immediately
| | 02:08 | at the very top of the worksheet.
There's a couple of rows that have other
| | 02:12 | information in them - perhaps titles or
instructions - and so we have one, two,
| | 02:16 | three, four, five, six, seven, eight
rows of data that really aren't data.
| | 02:22 | The unfortunate thing about this is
that because our information doesn't
| | 02:25 | start in row one with column headings,
what I have is one label that says
| | 02:31 | Type vendor application.
| | 02:32 | It's actually just some information, and
then those unidentified fields, F1, F2,
| | 02:37 | F3, F4, and so on, start immediately.
| | 02:40 | So even though the information is
labeled with an application date, a
| | 02:45 | reference check date, first, last, and
so on, I'd like these fields to be up
| | 02:49 | here, but they are not,
| | 02:50 | simply because they are not in row one.
| | 02:52 | There are some folks who would just
proceed through this merge at this point,
| | 02:55 | but I am not one of them, because I
actually want to be able to put fields in my
| | 02:58 | letter and see what they are called.
| | 02:59 | I don't wan to have to create a little
cheat sheet that says F3 really is the
| | 03:03 | first name, and F5 really
is the name of the company.
| | 03:05 | So we are going to go make a change to
this worksheet in Excel, so that we can
| | 03:10 | more easily identify it
for use in our mail merge.
| | 03:14 | I have already opened this workbook in
Microsoft Excel, and if you look, here is
| | 03:19 | that current sheet that starts
in row one with our field names.
| | 03:22 | Here is the Pending sheet, and if we
take a look, rows one through eight have
| | 03:26 | nothing to do really with the data
that we will use in a mail merge.
| | 03:30 | So what I am going to do is I am going
to select the data that we do want to use
| | 03:34 | in our mail merge, and we are going to
give it a name, so that we can find that
| | 03:38 | name when we open the workbook.
| | 03:40 | So we are looking at A through K,
and then all the way down to row 88.
| | 03:45 | You could select a few extra rows if you
wanted to. And the speedy way to select
| | 03:50 | this range of data, or any other range,
by the way, is to select the first cell,
| | 03:53 | hold Ctrl and Shift on your
keyboard go to the right and go down.
| | 03:58 | Excel will automatically select all
the way to the right, until it runs out of
| | 04:02 | cells that are used, and all the way
down, so again, another really quick way
| | 04:05 | to select this data.
| | 04:07 | The goal here though, is to name this data range.
| | 04:09 | To the left of the Formula bar is an
area called the Name Box, and I can click
| | 04:14 | in the Name Box and simply give this a name.
| | 04:15 | It can't have a space in it.
| | 04:17 | For example, these are our pending
vendor applications, so I could call his
| | 04:21 | PendingApps, for example, any name I
want, and then I have to remember not just
| | 04:26 | to click somewhere else, but to press Enter.
That's the part you are most likely to forget.
| | 04:29 | So I am going to press Enter, and
I can check that that name works by
| | 04:33 | clicking any place else in the
workbook, clicking the down arrow ,and going
| | 04:36 | back to PendingApps. And Excel says, if
you choose this, this is the area that
| | 04:40 | we are talking about.
| | 04:41 | My attention here isn't to teach you
about naming in Excel other than this;
| | 04:45 | however, I will tell you that you will
find all the names in the workbook by
| | 04:48 | clicking the Formulas tab and choosing
the Name Manager, and if you need to edit
| | 04:53 | or delete or rename this named range,
this is what you will do it here, in this
| | 04:58 | Name Manager dialog box.
| | 05:00 | Let's go ahead and save our
Excel workbook, and it says it's in
| | 05:04 | Compatibility Mode right now.
| | 05:05 | We could take care of that while we
are here, as well, by converting it.
| | 05:09 | So we will click OK.
| | 05:10 | We will click Yes, and now this
Vendors workbook is no longer in
| | 05:13 | Compatibility mode.
| | 05:15 | It's a nice 2007-2010 Workbook now,
and we are going to save this entire
| | 05:20 | workbook and close it.
| | 05:21 | Now, we are back in Microsoft Word again,
and let's go find that named range.
| | 05:25 | We do it exactly the same
way we found the worksheets.
| | 05:28 | Select Recipients > Use Existing List.
Our Excel workbook is still on the desktop.
| | 05:33 | It's still in the Exercises Folder in
Chapter 1, and you will notice now that
| | 05:37 | when we open that workbook, we have
the two worksheets that end in a dollar
| | 05:40 | sign, but we also have that named range
we just created and saved the workbook.
| | 05:45 | So let's go pick up PendingApps as our
mail merge data source, and when we look
| | 05:50 | at Edit Recipient List, you will notice
that only the named range is imported;
| | 05:55 | therefore, we get nice field names at
the top of our Mail Merge Recipients List.
| | 06:01 | Now you can do all of the same things
and this mail merge Recipients List from
| | 06:05 | Excel as you could in the list that
we typed ourselves, or in the contacts we
| | 06:09 | imported from Outlook.
| | 06:11 | We can sort using the column
headings or open a Sort dialog box.
| | 06:14 | We can Filter, to say, for example,
that we only want to have those
| | 06:18 | records where the Business State is
Equal to Ohio or the Business State is
| | 06:26 | Equal to California.
| | 06:27 | You may actually enter a lot of these
if you wish to limit the list, and we
| | 06:32 | should only now see
records from California and Ohio.
| | 06:36 | We can find duplicates.
| | 06:37 | We can look to make sure a
particular recipient is in our list.
| | 06:40 | If we know that we are looking
for someone that should be in this
| | 06:43 | data set, that's a good way to check
and make sure that you have the data
| | 06:46 | that you actually want.
| | 06:47 | So, two different ways that you can
identify the actual Excel data that Word
| | 06:52 | should use as your data source:
| | 06:54 | first, a simple worksheet that ideally
contains no other data, or second, by
| | 06:59 | identifying the data in Excel,
naming the range and saving it.
| | 07:03 | You will always make this choice based,
not on what's happening in Word, but how
| | 07:07 | your data is arranged within
the worksheets in Microsoft Excel.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Matching fields from the data source| 00:00 | After you identify and select a data
source, Word loads the field, or column
| | 00:05 | names used in your data
source, into the Word document.
| | 00:09 | Let's go ahead and open this
VendorApps letter, and notice that it's got a SQL
| | 00:14 | command that says we need
to open a data source too.
| | 00:16 | We talked about this in a earlier video.
Just click Yes here, and you will be
| | 00:20 | clicking Yes a lot as you open
your merge letters from now on.
| | 00:24 | Let's go to the Mailings tab.
| | 00:25 | We are already connected to a data source.
| | 00:28 | We can take a real quick look and
see that we have a recipient list.
| | 00:31 | This is actually connected to the data
source that's called Vendors-with named range.
| | 00:36 | Now what we want to do is we want to
make sure that the names that we used in
| | 00:40 | our data source match up with
the names that Word expects to see.
| | 00:44 | For example, Word uses
First Name, Last Name, Email.
| | 00:50 | It doesn't really have
anything for App Date and Ref Check.
| | 00:53 | Instead of name of company, it uses
Company, and instead of Business Street or
| | 00:57 | Bus Street, it uses Address 1 and Address 2.
| | 01:01 | So we want to be able to use built-
in blocks, like an address block and a
| | 01:05 | greeting line, when we construct our
merge letter, and in order to do that we
| | 01:10 | need to match up the names that are used
in our data source with the names that
| | 01:13 | Word expects to see.
| | 01:14 | We are going to do that by
clicking on Match Fields.
| | 01:18 | Now we can work our way down this
entire list, or we can simply make sure
| | 01:22 | that we account for every field that we
have in our data source that could be a match.
| | 01:26 | We have a field called First, Word has
a field called First Name, and so it's
| | 01:31 | able to make that match fairly well.
| | 01:34 | It went out looking for a Middle Name,
didn't find one. But guess what?
| | 01:38 | We don't have one in our
data source, so not a problem.
| | 01:40 | Last Name, it matched
with Last; that works, too.
| | 01:44 | But when it got down to Company, it
couldn't find anything that it felt
| | 01:47 | confident matching on its own.
| | 01:49 | So it's asking us to do that, and we
are going to choose Name of Company.
| | 01:53 | We have an address.
| | 01:54 | We call ours Business Street.
| | 01:57 | We have a City, called Business City, and
so on, matching the State and ZIP Code.
| | 02:05 | Now if we scroll down, we have a couple
of fields that we are not going to use,
| | 02:10 | but we should match those up anyway.
| | 02:11 | For example, we actually do have a
business phone included in our data source.
| | 02:16 | Word would like to have one, so let's
match it up, and I do this now because
| | 02:20 | later on, if I decide to modify this
letter and include a verification of a
| | 02:24 | phone number, I could spend a long
time trying to figure out why that phone
| | 02:28 | number doesn't merge.
| | 02:30 | Email address matched just fine.
| | 02:32 | So all of the fields that Word
expects to see, that actually exist in our
| | 02:36 | data source, are here.
| | 02:38 | If we make a mistake with one of these,
if, for example, you chose this as title
| | 02:41 | and you are, ah, that's wrong.
| | 02:42 | Let's go back and change it to Not Matched.
| | 02:45 | It's all good, and I am going to click OK.
| | 02:48 | Now I have a map from the field names
that are used in my Excel worksheet to
| | 02:53 | the names that are used by Word in Address
Blocks, Greeting lines, and other kinds of fields.
| | 03:00 | We could have, of course, have started
this exercise by making a copy that
| | 03:04 | Excel workbook and changing the column names
to match the names that Word is looking for.
| | 03:09 | But number 1, that's extra work.
| | 03:11 | Number 2, then we end up with two
copies of the data. Who is going to maintain
| | 03:15 | that extra set for us?
| | 03:17 | And besides, there's no reason not to do
it using the built-in tools here in Word.
| | 03:22 | This Match Fields feature is
incredibly easy to use to tell Word how to make
| | 03:26 | sense out of the field names
that we have in our data source.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Inserting address blocks, greeting lines, and merge fields| 00:01 | We have created our letter, selected
our data source as in Excel workbook, used
| | 00:07 | Field Matching to match the fields in
our data source with the fields that Word
| | 00:10 | expects to see, and now it's time to
actually insert those fields into our
| | 00:15 | letter, so that we have data fields
where we have text that needs to be
| | 00:19 | variable, changed from letter to letter.
| | 00:22 | This is wicked easy in Word 20010.
| | 00:24 | So we are going to start with our letter,
and we can insert fields in a number of ways.
| | 00:29 | First, you can insert fields one at a time here.
| | 00:32 | You will notice these are the
names of our fields that we matched up.
| | 00:35 | We have First, Last, instead of First
Name, Last Name, Name of Company instead
| | 00:39 | of Company, and so on.
| | 00:40 | So we could build this block out by
simply choosing all of the different pieces.
| | 00:46 | For example, we could build City, State
and ZIP by putting in City and a comma space.
| | 00:52 | We could then put in State and a couple
of spaces, and we could then put in ZIP
| | 00:56 | code, and that would work just fine.
| | 00:59 | Notice that these fields
have delimiters around them.
| | 01:02 | You don't want to ever type these
in. These were inserted, not typed.
| | 01:06 | However, I can insert the
entire address block at one time.
| | 01:10 | I can simply select all of this text and
delete it, and let's drop in an address block.
| | 01:15 | The Insert Address Block dialog box
opens, and we get to choose how we want our
| | 01:20 | address block to appear.
Pay attention to the preview over here.
| | 01:25 | So, for example, if we choose to
have a Title and we have one it will be
| | 01:28 | included, if we choose The Randall Family, it
will put The, last name Family, on all of these.
| | 01:35 | If we don't want a company name, we
simply clear the check box, no company name.
| | 01:40 | If there was a field match that we
missed earlier, you can get right back to
| | 01:44 | that Match Fields dialog box right here.
| | 01:46 | So I am actually going to
choose the full name here.
| | 01:50 | I want a company, and I am going to
say OK, and there is my address block.
| | 01:54 | Now it will be highlighted, so we will go
clean up the formatting in a little bit.
| | 01:58 | Let's now get rid of this
text and insert a greeting line.
| | 02:02 | Right here, in the Write & Insert
Fields group, if I click Greeting Line, it
| | 02:06 | opens the Insert Greeting Line dialog box.
| | 02:08 | Don't just insert a first name after
the word "Dear." We want to look at that
| | 02:12 | line as a whole, and there
are a couple reasons for that.
| | 02:15 | First, we get to choose Dear, To,
(none). We will keep dear. That's kind of
| | 02:20 | nice. And then do we want a whole name?
| | 02:22 | If we have a First Name,
do we want a First Name?
| | 02:25 | That Joshua would be the First Name field,
Josh would be the Nickname field, and
| | 02:30 | if there's nothing in
Nickname, it will use first name.
| | 02:33 | So let's choose Dear Joshua, and then here
is the reason you choose the whole line.
| | 02:40 | What happens if you had
an invalid recipient name?
| | 02:42 | Let me give you an example.
| | 02:44 | You have a Company Name, but nobody
listed by first name or last name, no
| | 02:48 | contact for that company.
| | 02:50 | Well, if all I do is replace the name
with a first name, I will have Dear blank
| | 02:55 | sent to anyone for whom I
do not have a first name.
| | 02:58 | I am going to say, if there is no
first name, I simply want to have no
| | 03:01 | greeting line whatsoever;
| | 03:02 | no dear, no anything.
| | 03:04 | I could also have chosen Dear Sir
or Madam, or To Whom It May Concern.
| | 03:09 | One of those three will
usually get you where you want to go.
| | 03:12 | So here is a preview, and I can actually
scroll through several of my records here.
| | 03:16 | I am actually seeing folks from my data
source as I scroll through. And again,
| | 03:20 | if I was seeing last names, rather than
first names in the preview, I could click
| | 03:24 | Match Fields and go attend to that field match.
| | 03:27 | I am going to say OK, and
here is my Greeting Line.
| | 03:30 | Then finally, I have a field down here
that says Thank You in advance for your
| | 03:34 | attendance in September, comma, first name.
| | 03:36 | So I am going to select that, and we
are going to just drop the first name
| | 03:40 | field in right there.
| | 03:41 | Now if you leave all these highlighted,
it's kind of cool, because you can then
| | 03:44 | preview the results, and you will
actually see them laid out, and you will know
| | 03:47 | what you are looking for.
| | 03:48 | There is John Rollins' letter, Pam
Shepherd's, and so on. And you will see we
| | 03:53 | have some things that we
need to be attentive to.
| | 03:56 | Not just the highlighting, but the
spacing here, but the merge itself seems to
| | 03:59 | be working just fine.
| | 04:01 | So let's go back to the Home tab,
and let's take care of our spacing.
| | 04:04 | First, let's take this address
block and tell that it's no spacing.
| | 04:09 | We also need then, because the no
spacing is a 10-point Calibri, and we have
| | 04:13 | used a 12-point through the rest of
the letter, so let's just select all of
| | 04:17 | this, make it as 12-point as well, and
let's update our Style, so that it's all
| | 04:24 | going to be 12-point.
| | 04:26 | Then here, let's just get rid
of this highlighting. No color.
| | 04:30 | We'll get rid of our
highlighting here. No color.
| | 04:34 | That's looking good.
| | 04:35 | Let's go back to our Mailings tab now.
| | 04:38 | Now we can choose Highlight Merge
Fields to see where all the fields are in our
| | 04:41 | letter and preview the results the
same way. The gray is not as pretty as the
| | 04:44 | yellow, but it works just fine.
| | 04:46 | Our document is all ready for mail merge now.
| | 04:49 | We are hooked up to a data source, we
have matched our fields, we have inserted
| | 04:52 | our merge fields where we need them to be,
and so let's save this. But first one
| | 04:57 | more thing: spell-check.
| | 05:00 | This has a name in it. That's okay.
| | 05:02 | We are going to ignore it, and it says
we might want to not put a space here.
| | 05:07 | We can ignore this as well.
| | 05:09 | There is nothing like an error that you
send to all kinds of people, because you
| | 05:13 | included it in your primary merge letter.
| | 05:14 | Now that I have proofed this and I feel
good about it, we are going to go ahead
| | 05:18 | and save this under a new name, and
this is our Merge Apps Letter, and we will
| | 05:24 | call this Final, because it's really ready to
go, and we will be using it in the next video.
| | 05:30 | You get a really big jump on creating
a simple merge letter simply by using
| | 05:35 | these built-in address blocks that use
the fields that you matched up earlier
| | 05:39 | using the Match Fields feature.
| | 05:41 | Use individual fields within the body
of the letter, but try to use the Address
| | 05:45 | Block and Greeting Line to kick off the
beginning of your letter in Word 2010.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Previewing merge results| 00:00 | So we have our letter here, complete
with merge fields and a data source, but
| | 00:05 | it's not quite time to merge.
| | 00:06 | First, we are going to use Word's
Preview Results feature to see how a sample of
| | 00:10 | the individual letters will
look if we complete the merge.
| | 00:13 | And normally, if Preview Results is
turned off, what we see are the highlighted
| | 00:16 | merge fields, and we have
three of them here in our letter.
| | 00:19 | When we click Preview Results, we see
whatever the current record is, reflected
| | 00:24 | here in the Merge Fields.
| | 00:25 | So there is record 5.
| | 00:27 | We can click the first record button to
go to record 1, the last record button
| | 00:31 | to go to record 79, and we can use
these to work our way through and check out,
| | 00:38 | visually, all of the different records.
| | 00:40 | Ideally, we'd like to look at
groups of records that are different.
| | 00:43 | For example, in our data source, the
biggest difference between records is that
| | 00:47 | we have some that do have a
company name and some that don't.
| | 00:50 | So we would like to make sure
that that address block manages that.
| | 00:53 | We also have a few records
that have no first name in it.
| | 00:56 | We would like to make sure that the
Greeting Line handles those correctly.
| | 01:00 | So you can either know that you
are looking for a particular record.
| | 01:03 | For example, I know that Ross's
record doesn't have a company.
| | 01:08 | So if I say that I am looking for Ross,
and that's the first name, I can go
| | 01:12 | directly to Ross's record and say, okay,
there's no empty line between his name
| | 01:17 | and the address where the company
would be, and know that that handles it.
| | 01:21 | Or you can simply browse through the
records and make sure that you are feeling
| | 01:24 | comfortable with how things look.
| | 01:26 | Now we can use the Merge Auto Check
feature to actually check our letter, and see
| | 01:30 | if there are any kinds of errors in it.
| | 01:31 | Auto Check has three different options.
| | 01:34 | One option is to simulate the merge
and say it did or didn't run into some
| | 01:38 | errors, and to tell us that in a new document.
| | 01:41 | So let's click OK, and it actually just
ran through the merge really quickly and
| | 01:45 | said, I don't find anything at all.
| | 01:48 | So when your data source has just a few
hundred records, stored locally in Excel
| | 01:53 | or Outlook, this is as
good a way to check as any,
| | 01:55 | is this Auto Check for
Errors simulate the merge.
| | 01:59 | If your data source is a very large
database, such as a SQL Server or Access
| | 02:04 | database with thousands of records, even
if you are filtering and not using them
| | 02:08 | all, the simulation might not
accurately identify those errors.
| | 02:12 | So you have two different choices: one
is to complete the merge and to pause
| | 02:17 | whenever there's an error and let you
know, hey, I have got an error here, so
| | 02:20 | you can make note of it,
| | 02:21 | and the other is to complete the whole
merge without pausing, and if there are
| | 02:25 | errors, to report those out
to you in a new document.
| | 02:28 | So if I say, Complete the merge without pausing.
| | 02:31 | Report errors in new document, and click OK.
Word actually completes the entire merge.
| | 02:36 | This is the same as if I had chosen
mail merge. And to finish the merge, it puts
| | 02:40 | them in a new document called letters 1,
you will notice that there are 79 pages
| | 02:44 | here, because I have 79 records in my
data source, and no dialog box popped up
| | 02:49 | and went, oh, you have an error here,
so we know that we have gone all the way
| | 02:53 | through without hitting any errors at all.
| | 02:55 | If there are errors in the data source
or errors in the way the merge executes,
| | 02:59 | Word will pause at the end and tell you,
with a dialog, or if when I had done my
| | 03:05 | merge - let's go ahead and
close this and not save it =
| | 03:09 | I had chosen to Auto Check and to
pause in the way through it, it would actually
| | 03:12 | pop up and say you have an error here.
| | 03:14 | Now I have a preference for this.
| | 03:16 | I will always do the
merge without pausing first.
| | 03:19 | The reason being that if you have an
error that occurs with every single
| | 03:23 | record, you can't get out of it until
you've said okay to 79 dialog boxes here,
| | 03:28 | because you have 79 records.
| | 03:30 | So it is always better to use the
first and the last option, and then if you
| | 03:34 | need to go through and actually close
in on two or three records, you could
| | 03:38 | complete the merge and ask to have the
pause happen at the records so that you can see it.
| | 03:42 | You may have used other Word
processing programs or prior versions of Word,
| | 03:47 | some of which made it hard to preview your
results or to check for errors before merging,
| | 03:52 | but with Word 2010, you can preview and
error-check before merging and printing.
| | 03:58 | So you won't need to waste paper
printing errors, and you won't need to
| | 04:02 | physically inspect all of the
individual letters that you create with
| | 04:06 | mail merge.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Completing the merge| 00:00 | We have our mail merge primary file open.
| | 00:03 | We've already auto-checked for
errors in the Preview Results Group.
| | 00:06 | Now we are ready to finish our merge,
and combine our letter with the records
| | 00:10 | from the data source to
create personalized letters.
| | 00:13 | There are two options for merging letters -
| | 00:15 | three options in total.
| | 00:17 | Send Email Messages, we
will talk about in later video.
| | 00:20 | So we are going to focus
on these first two items.
| | 00:23 | The first is to edit individual documents,
and the second is to print documents.
| | 00:27 | Here's how to think of these.
| | 00:28 | The first really says, merge to a
file that I can then examine and print.
| | 00:33 | And the second says, merge right to the printer.
| | 00:36 | If you need to keep a copy of your
merged file, for example proof that you
| | 00:40 | generated all the letters, then you
need to choose Edit Individual Documents,
| | 00:44 | because Print Documents
leaves you with no proof.
| | 00:47 | If you choose Edit Individual Documents,
Word will complete the merge and create
| | 00:51 | one large file that contains all your letters.
| | 00:54 | So let's choose that and say merge all
records, and if we watch down here on the
| | 00:58 | Status bar, you will notice Word
ripping along, merging each of those individual
| | 01:02 | records in, so that we have one long
document that actually is 79 pages long.
| | 01:09 | All the different letters. And we can
look at each of them, but more importantly,
| | 01:12 | we can choose to print some of them.
| | 01:14 | We can print 1 through 9.
| | 01:15 | We can print letters 5, 7, and 22 if you wish.
| | 01:19 | So you have the choice over exactly what
prints, and you have a file that you can
| | 01:24 | save when you're done.
| | 01:25 | So I could save this as Letter
Sent August 24th to vendor applicants.
| | 01:29 | I am going to close this and throw it away.
| | 01:32 | The other choice is to say, I'd like
to send this right to the printer.
| | 01:36 | Now, if you don't need to keep a
copy of this document, that works fine.
| | 01:40 | But as soon as you choose Print
Documents and set your settings in the Merge to
| | 01:45 | Printer and click OK, Word
starts kicking stuff to your printer.
| | 01:48 | So if you need to have
letterhead put in your printer, do it now -
| | 01:51 | not after you click OK.
| | 01:53 | However you need to have your printer set up,
| | 01:56 | you need to do it right now, then come
back, then click OK, because when you
| | 02:01 | start, these will automatically
merge directly to your printer.
| | 02:04 | You note that there's nothing new here to save.
| | 02:07 | So just head for the
printer and pick up your letters.
| | 02:09 | You know, the Merge itself is sort of
anti-climactic. You know, a couple of
| | 02:13 | clicks, and Word does the heavy-
lifting required to generate the letters
| | 02:16 | that you have created, using Word in a data
source and making all of those other choices.
| | 02:22 | But when you do get to merge it, it's
pretty cool, because you get to go pick up
| | 02:25 | your product and
distribute it however you need to.
| | 02:27 | Here's the good news.
| | 02:29 | Your letter is done, and in the future,
if you want to reuse this letter again,
| | 02:32 | the only thing you need to do
is merge once again, in Word 2010.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Troubleshooting| 00:00 | From the human being's point of view,
the actual Word mail merge is a relatively
| | 00:04 | straightforward process.
| | 00:06 | We just click a button under Finish
and Merge, and Word does all the work.
| | 00:10 | However, under the hood, mail merge is
relatively complex, with Word requesting
| | 00:14 | and using data files from other
applications to create totally new documents.
| | 00:20 | In this session, we'll look at some fixes
for some of the more common issues that
| | 00:23 | arise during a Word mail merge.
| | 00:26 | Before I continue, however, because
we know Word is doing a lot of work,
| | 00:29 | if you're doing a merge with hundreds
or thousands of records, this is not a
| | 00:33 | good time to play a game of Solitaire
or to have five other applications running.
| | 00:37 | Word needs lots a resource to access
lots of data records for the merge.
| | 00:41 | So this is a good time to close down
other applications. That will fix many of
| | 00:45 | your issues with large data sources.
| | 00:47 | Let's take a look at our letter here.
| | 00:49 | Here's the basic rule.
| | 00:51 | We have two different types of
files we're putting together.
| | 00:54 | The file that we see here in Word
contains field codes and then all the
| | 00:57 | constant information.
| | 00:59 | So if we have an error that appears in
every single letter, the odds are very
| | 01:03 | good that we're going to find it
here in Word, not in our data source.
| | 01:07 | So if we are previewing our results here,
and we tab through, use the next button
| | 01:12 | in order find our next recipient,
| | 01:14 | we find a spelling error, and
that spelling error doesn't change.
| | 01:17 | That spelling error is
here in our primary letter.
| | 01:19 | We forgot to proof it.
| | 01:21 | So we can right-click, and we can
fix the spelling here on location.
| | 01:25 | Notice that we have an issue here with everyone.
| | 01:28 | Let's go fix that as well, and now we've
fixed all of these letters at one time.
| | 01:34 | The next thing you might want to take a
look at is punctuation, because if you
| | 01:38 | have missing punctuation near a field code,
Word Grammar Check will almost never catch it.
| | 01:43 | For example, we have "Thank you for agreeing
to take a leadership role in our next meeting."
| | 01:49 | First, and there should be a period here.
| | 01:51 | There isn't one, and nothing
tells you there should be.
| | 01:54 | You actually have to visually check to
make sure that the punctuation is correct
| | 01:58 | near your field codes.
| | 02:00 | So catch those as you go through.
| | 02:03 | The next thing is you want to make
sure that your formatting is good, and
| | 02:06 | there's two possibilities here.
| | 02:08 | First, your data source has formatting
in it, and that formatting, most of the
| | 02:13 | time, will have no affect on your letter.
| | 02:15 | But sometimes it will, and it depends
how the data source gets connected to your
| | 02:20 | Microsoft Word document.
| | 02:22 | If you're working with Word merges
that we've created in previous versions of
| | 02:26 | Word, or have been used in your
organization for a number of years, they probably
| | 02:30 | use a kind of linking called Dynamic
Data Exchange, and with DDE all of the
| | 02:36 | formatting from your source
document comes over to this document.
| | 02:40 | Now Character Formatting, like Font
Formatting, you can still manage here.
| | 02:44 | So I have, for example, Calibri, and if
I want to make sure that I use Calibri
| | 02:49 | through my whole document, I can just
pick up the format painter, or I can
| | 02:53 | select all my text and choose one font
for all of my text and make sure that
| | 02:57 | it is standardized.
| | 02:58 | You can also choose one font size for
all of my text, and I'm formatting not
| | 03:03 | just my regular text, but my field codes.
| | 03:05 | It would be a good idea, when I'm all
done, to update normal to match that
| | 03:08 | selection here in my styles list.
| | 03:11 | But if after having done this
I have text come through with
| | 03:14 | different formatting,
| | 03:15 | go back and attempt to format your
field codes, rather than trying to deal with
| | 03:19 | that in your data source.
| | 03:21 | So what kind of errors can occur
that come from your data source?
| | 03:24 | Well, the primary error that you'll have in
your data source is where one record has
| | 03:28 | incomplete information, or incorrect information.
| | 03:31 | For example, when I preview my
results and I go through, what I'll find is
| | 03:35 | that I have some folks who actually
don't have a Company Name, and if every
| | 03:40 | person here should have a company, like Ross
Atkins does not here, I can't fix that here.
| | 03:46 | Clearly, the Company Code is in my
letter, because the company appears for
| | 03:50 | Shelley, and the company appears for Warren.
| | 03:52 | So I'll need to actually go back
into my data source and correct that.
| | 03:56 | I can go into Edit Recipient List and
actually go take a look, and some of my
| | 04:01 | data source types, like the data
source I create, I can edit here.
| | 04:05 | I can't edit this one, because it's in Excel.
| | 04:07 | I'll actually need to go into Excel and
edit that Data Source, or select Edit here.
| | 04:13 | So if I add a Company Name for Ross and
having entered this, go ahead and click OK,
| | 04:21 | and I'm actually updating my Excel file,
| | 04:23 | that's what I have been asked to update, XLSX.
| | 04:26 | So yes, I'd like to like to
update my Excel file and click OK.
| | 04:29 | Now it might be that the kind of
connection you have to a data source doesn't
| | 04:33 | even allow you to do that.
| | 04:35 | You go click Edit, you even make
a change, and it says you can't.
| | 04:38 | In that case, you might have to go open
that data source directly or talk to the
| | 04:42 | person who maintains that
data source on a regular basis.
| | 04:46 | And the last thing that we are going
to deal with is we're going to deal with
| | 04:48 | this formatting issue, where we have a
lot of extra spacing here in our address
| | 04:52 | block, and we'll simply go into our
letter and fix that, and by doing so, we will
| | 04:57 | be fixing it again in every single letter.
| | 04:59 | Again, another good example of an
issue that's in our primary file, rather
| | 05:03 | than in our data source.
| | 05:05 | When you understand the difference
between your primary mail merge letter and
| | 05:11 | your secondary data source from Excel,
Outlook, Access, or somewhere else, you
| | 05:15 | won't have much difficulty tracking
and fixing errors that occur in your
| | 05:20 | final mail merged letters.
| | Collapse this transcript |
|
|
2. Creating Other Types of Merged DocumentsCreating personalized email messages| 00:00 | Using merge to create e-mail messages
is a Word feature added several versions
| | 00:05 | ago that flew under the
radar of many Word users.
| | 00:09 | Even users who've been merging letters
for years are often creating e-mails that
| | 00:13 | includes dozens of recipients, the kind
of e-mails that you and I are less likely
| | 00:18 | to read when we're busy.
| | 00:19 | I mean, if this e-mail was sent to 40 people, how
important could it be for you or I to read it.
| | 00:25 | With e-mail merge, you can create
personalized, individual e-mails for each of
| | 00:29 | your 40 recipients, e-mails that
they are much more likely to read.
| | 00:33 | As with a merge letter, you
begin with your formatted text.
| | 00:37 | I have a letter here on the screen that I
want to send out by e-mail to a number of people.
| | 00:41 | So we'll go to the Mailing tab and start
with Start mail merge and choose Email Messages.
| | 00:48 | Notice that Word reformats this to a
wider format and almost looks like in an
| | 00:52 | e-mail message already.
| | 00:54 | And now I'm going to choose recipients.
| | 00:56 | I'm going to choose Select Recipients, >
Use Existing List and for this e-mail
| | 01:00 | message, I'm going to choose a file
that I have in Excel, and so that's how my
| | 01:04 | desktop, in my Exercise
Files folder, in Chapter 2.
| | 01:07 | This is called Prospects.
| | 01:09 | So I'm going to open this, and it's
actually a workbook that has only one
| | 01:13 | worksheet in it, called Email Prospects,
and I'm going to say OK to connect
| | 01:18 | to that data source.
| | 01:19 | So if I go take a look at my Recipient
List, what you'll see is your Last Names,
| | 01:22 | First Names, Company Names, and Addresses.
| | 01:25 | The field I care about is I actually
had e-mail addresses in here, and they look
| | 01:28 | like valid e-mail addresses.
| | 01:29 | They have @ symbols in them, so I can
send them outside of my organization.
| | 01:34 | So now it's time to insert some merge fields.
| | 01:36 | I could use a Greeting Line.
| | 01:38 | I could say, Dear whomever.
| | 01:40 | But you know, just saying Hi by
itself is probably OK, and all of these
| | 01:44 | actually have a first name.
| | 01:46 | So I'm going to insert a
First_Name. Hi First_Name.
| | 01:49 | I was on the linda.com training site
looking at the huge list of Microsoft
| | 01:52 | Office courses and thought of you and
your colleagues @ your Company Name here
| | 01:58 | and make sure that I tend to this
space before and after, because remember,
| | 02:02 | Grammar Check won't catch that for me, so
I'm going to hit, here we go, no extra spaces.
| | 02:06 | Have you considered online training at all?
| | 02:09 | I'd love to talk with you about this.
| | 02:10 | I believe it would be a great way to use
some of your training budget this year,
| | 02:14 | and would be much more affordable than
flying trainers out to your location.
| | 02:18 | You could do City, State.
I kind of like State here.
| | 02:22 | Flying trainers out of Washington, sounds good.
| | 02:24 | I can always change my mind about some of this.
| | 02:27 | Now I want to make sure there's
no space here, and when I space or
| | 02:29 | backspace, there isn't one space,
no, there are no extra spaces.
| | 02:33 | Notice that Word has flagged this.
| | 02:35 | As I said, the Grammar Check
doesn't work real well around fields.
| | 02:38 | I'll give you a call later this week,
or you can e-mail me and let me know
| | 02:42 | if you'd like to talk.
| | 02:42 | It would be good to catch up with you.
| | 02:44 | I want to tuck a First
Name in here one more time.
| | 02:46 | I'll give you a call later this week,
space <<First_Name >>, or you can e-mail
| | 02:53 | me and let me know when you'd like to talk.
| | 02:54 | Now let's take a look and see how those look.
| | 02:56 | I'll go to Preview Results.
| | 02:59 | Hi Sharon, thought of you and your
colleagues at flying trainers out to -- I
| | 03:03 | think it just doesn't like
my mid western grammar here.
| | 03:06 | I could say flying trainers to
Minnesota, see, and it goes away.
| | 03:11 | You know, I'd say "out to," so
I'm going to leave it in here.
| | 03:14 | This letter is all about sounding just like me.
| | 03:17 | Just like I sat down and
typed this out to Sharon.
| | 03:19 | That's the whole point. Or I
sat and typed it out to Meredith.
| | 03:23 | So, good-looking letters. I'm liking this.
| | 03:25 | So I should run Spell Check and run Grammar
Check, except you know, I'm going to ignore it,
| | 03:29 | the Grammar Check piece already.
| | 03:32 | What I want to make sure that this letter
is exactly what I want to sent by e-mail.
| | 03:36 | Now, here's the part that gets tricky.
| | 03:38 | When I'm all done, I don't want to print these.
| | 03:40 | I want to send e-mail messages.
| | 03:41 | Don't click that yet, because when
you do, when I click the Send Email
| | 03:46 | messages, these e-mail messages are
going to fly right out of Word directly to
| | 03:50 | Outlook, jump in the inbox for like in
a microsecond, and then they'll be out
| | 03:55 | and about in the world.
| | 03:55 | So if I have an error here, I'm
going to be sending it out to everybody.
| | 04:01 | Not only that, but if I am sending it
like to a hundred people, or 200, or 300,
| | 04:04 | I'm going to trip over some of those
triggers for spam that are based simply on
| | 04:09 | the volume that I'm sending.
| | 04:10 | So before I do this merge, a couple of things.
| | 04:13 | So we're going to go over to Outlook,
click on Send and Receive, and say I'd
| | 04:17 | like to Work Offline, and notice that
this is turned on. Down in the status bar
| | 04:21 | it says I'm Working Offline.
| | 04:23 | What this means is that no e-mails
will be sent or received right now.
| | 04:27 | Now, I can go back to Microsoft Word,
and it would just be ever so smart for me
| | 04:30 | to merge a few of these,
rather than all of them, at first.
| | 04:33 | So I'm going to send e-mail messages by Email.
| | 04:37 | I identify the subject line, and
the subject line of this could say,
| | 04:41 | publicity for lynda.com
| | 04:42 | But I'm going to say
something like, how are you doing?
| | 04:46 | Because I want to seem you know
friendly, and basically I am friendly.
| | 04:51 | And then I'm going to just merge a
handful of records, 1 to 5, okay, and then
| | 04:53 | I'm going to say OK.
| | 04:56 | Now if I were going to do this for a
number of these, I'm actually going to copy
| | 04:59 | this subject line, because I'm
going to be pasting it a few more times.
| | 05:03 | So I'm going to say OK.
My merge is done. That quick.
| | 05:06 | If I go back to Outlook and I look
in my Outbox, I'll find there are five
| | 05:09 | letters there. All of them have the
subject that I gave, How are you doing, and
| | 05:14 | now I can go take a look, and I can proof a
couple of them say, yeah, that looks good.
| | 05:18 | That's exactly what I expected to have happen.
| | 05:20 | The outlook's good, too.
| | 05:21 | Now if I only wanted five letters, I
could actually just double-click and send
| | 05:24 | these again, and they would go back
into the queue to send, or I could delete
| | 05:28 | them all, okay. No harm no foul. Say OK,
| | 05:31 | I'm done with working offline,
because the whole point of working offline,
| | 05:34 | actually was to be able to go in and
to make sure the stuff was held up
| | 05:38 | long enough that I actually could go in and
intercede if there was an issue with some letters.
| | 05:44 | Now I'll come back and I'll decide
how many letters I want to do at a time.
| | 05:48 | If I have more than 50, I'm
probably going to break them into batches.
| | 05:51 | 1 through 50, 51 to 100, 101 to 150, and so on.
| | 05:58 | So I'm just going to choose Finish & Merge.
| | 06:01 | I'm going to say I want to Send Email Messages.
| | 06:03 | The subject line will remain from
time to time, if I don't change it.
| | 06:06 | Tell it that I want to do, in the first
batch, 1 to 50, click OK, and send all of
| | 06:11 | my letters flying right through my
Outbox to my Sent Items and out my friends.
| | 06:15 | Now you and I are used to getting
targeted mail - what many of us just refer to
| | 06:19 | as junk mail - so we're used to ignoring
those personalized letters that really
| | 06:23 | aren't all that personal.
| | 06:24 | On the other hand, most users assume
that any e-mail that is addressed only to
| | 06:29 | them, and that has personal information
within the body from someone that they
| | 06:34 | know isn't junk mail, but a message that you
actually took the time to sit and type yourself.
| | 06:39 | So if you're sending 50 e-mails and
you really want most of them to be read,
| | 06:44 | don't send one e-mail that's copied
to 50 people or even one e-mail with 50
| | 06:49 | people in the BCC field.
| | 06:50 | Use Microsoft Word mail merge and create
personalized e-mail that will be opened
| | 06:55 | and read by the people you send them to.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating envelopes| 00:00 | If your mail merged letters include an
address block, you already have enough
| | 00:04 | information to be able to print
labels or envelopes using mail merge.
| | 00:08 | In this video, we'll
focus on printing envelopes.
| | 00:11 | First, let's start with just a blank
document, and go to the Mailings tab and
| | 00:16 | choose Start Mail Merge, and
we're going to choose Envelopes.
| | 00:20 | Now, over in this other group on the
Mailings tab Create, that Envelopes command
| | 00:24 | is used to print single envelopes, or
a stack of envelopes that all have the
| | 00:29 | same address on them, like a return envelope.
| | 00:32 | If we want to create mail merged
envelopes with a data source, we need to
| | 00:35 | choose Start Mail Merge > Envelopes.
| | 00:38 | In a moment, the Envelope
Options dialog box will open.
| | 00:41 | It will ask us about our envelopes,
sizes, the location of the delivery address
| | 00:47 | and return address on the envelope, and
then printing options, including one of
| | 00:51 | 12 possibilities for how the
envelope actually feeds into your printer.
| | 00:55 | So, mark up a sheet of paper and take it
to your printer and go check it out and
| | 00:59 | figure out what your printer settings
are, or look in help for your printer,
| | 01:03 | your printer's manual, so that you can
set all of these envelope options for
| | 01:08 | paper size, address position, and
printing and feed options, and then click OK.
| | 01:14 | Now we need to select a
data source for our addresses.
| | 01:17 | So, let's go to Select Recipients > Use
Existing List, and I'm going to choose
| | 01:23 | my Exercise Files folder, Chapter 2, and
pull up my Prospects workbook, which has
| | 01:29 | one worksheet in it called
Email Prospects. Click OK.
| | 01:32 | Now, all I need to do is drop an
address block in for the Delivery address.
| | 01:37 | Simple enough to do.
| | 01:38 | So, we'll choose Address Block.
The Insert Address Block dialog box opens, the
| | 01:43 | same dialog we saw when we inserted an
address block in our mail merged letter.
| | 01:48 | So, change the settings for the
recipient's name, company name, and so on, so
| | 01:53 | that the preview appears the
way you'd like it to appear.
| | 01:56 | If this is a data source you're using
for the first time, you may need to do
| | 02:00 | some field matching.
| | 02:01 | Click the Match Fields button to do that.
| | 02:03 | Let's click OK to drop our address block here.
| | 02:06 | Now, let's preview the results.
| | 02:07 | As you'll see, we have a series of envelopes.
| | 02:10 | Don't worry about the
placement of this address block here.
| | 02:14 | We actually determined that in that first
dialog where we set the envelope options.
| | 02:19 | So, it will simply appear in the upper-left.
| | 02:21 | That doesn't mean it's going to appear
there when we actually print the envelopes.
| | 02:24 | One last thought about something we
might want to do. The United States Postal
| | 02:27 | Service and other postal
agencies would really like to have this
| | 02:32 | information provided in caps.
| | 02:34 | In order to do that, what we need
to do is format the Address Block.
| | 02:39 | So, we'll go to the Home tab, and we
can't actually choose Change Case, because
| | 02:45 | if we do, all it'll do is change the
case of this particular address block, but
| | 02:49 | it won't apply it to the letters.
| | 02:50 | We actually need to format the address block.
| | 02:53 | So, we're going to open the Font dialog
box by clicking the Dialog Box launcher,
| | 02:57 | and choose All caps and click OK.
| | 03:00 | Now when we return to the Mailings tab
and preview our results, you'll see that
| | 03:05 | all of our envelopes will be addressed in caps.
| | 03:07 | We can change that back to proper case, if
we want to change our mind about that format.
| | 03:12 | Word's Mailings features make it easy to
quickly lay out and print the envelopes
| | 03:16 | that you need for large mailings.
| | 03:19 | If you need to create a single envelope,
of course, don't use mail merge, but
| | 03:22 | when you need to create a group of them,
this Mailings tab allows you to quickly
| | 03:27 | and easily create dozens, hundreds,
or thousands of envelopes, using your
| | 03:31 | printer and Microsoft Word 2010.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Creating labels| 00:00 | When you need to address envelopes for
a large mailing, you can use mail merge
| | 00:05 | to create sheets of address labels by
creating a connection with your data
| | 00:09 | source to Microsoft Word.
| | 00:11 | Each label will contain one address
from one record in the data source.
| | 00:14 | But you can use this same process
for far more than just address labels.
| | 00:19 | If you go to an office supply store,
you'll see CD labels, folder labels, name
| | 00:23 | tag labels, anything else you like to
print. And any of these label-like products
| | 00:28 | can be created using merge in Word 2010.
| | 00:32 | Let's go to the Mailings tab.
| | 00:33 | I have a blank document open.
| | 00:36 | As with envelopes, if what you wanted
to print was a single label or an entire
| | 00:41 | page of identical labels, you
wouldn't use mail merge for that.
| | 00:44 | You would simply use Create Labels.
| | 00:47 | We want to create a group of labels
tied to a data source, so we're going to
| | 00:51 | choose Start Mail Merge > Labels.
| | 00:54 | In just a moment, the
Label Options dialog box opens.
| | 00:58 | There are two different types of labels stock.
| | 01:01 | Most of you probably have
what are called page printers.
| | 01:04 | Very few of us use continuous-feed
printers anymore for things like label stock
| | 01:08 | or paper stock, also called burst printers.
| | 01:11 | If you have one of those, you can talk
to the people who feed the labels in, and
| | 01:16 | get the label number, because that's
the trick here is we want to choose the
| | 01:20 | appropriate label for the
printing that we're going to do.
| | 01:24 | So, a number of different label vendors.
Some of the larger ones, for example, are Avery.
| | 01:29 | That's Avery US Letter.
| | 01:31 | These are Avery's European labels.
| | 01:33 | Another is Formtec, and you choose the
labels that you want to print on, and you
| | 01:39 | read the number and the
manufacturer off the end of the box.
| | 01:42 | We're going to print some basic address labels.
| | 01:45 | So we would choose Avery US Letter, and
then I'm going to click in the product number.
| | 01:50 | If you type all the numbers right in
a row, it will take you right to them.
| | 01:53 | If I just type 5, it will take
me to the first of the fives.
| | 01:56 | But no matter where I am, if I type 5260,
it will actually take me to the 5260s.
| | 02:01 | If I pause, it thinks I'm
entering a different number.
| | 02:05 | These are called Easy Peel Address Labels.
| | 02:07 | If I wanted to take a look at what
those look like, if I wasn't sure if the box
| | 02:11 | was gone, but I thought they were 5260s,
| | 02:13 | I can take a look, and it will show
me that they are what are called 3 up.
| | 02:15 | They are 3 across and 10 down.
| | 02:17 | You can also create custom labels in here.
| | 02:20 | Once I've set up my label and I say this is
the label that I'm going to use, I can click OK.
| | 02:24 | Now, I need to select a data
source to go along with this.
| | 02:28 | So, we can choose Select Recipients >
Use Existing List, and now I'm going
| | 02:34 | to choose my data source, in my
exercise files for Chapter 2, and I'm going
| | 02:38 | to choose this Prospects data source,
Microsoft Excel workbook that contains one data set.
| | 02:45 | Now, what I have is I have a whole
set of labels, one whole page of them.
| | 02:50 | 30 labels. 29 of them say Next Record
in them, and one is waiting just for me.
| | 02:57 | So, I'm going to insert an address block here.
| | 03:00 | If I were doing a nametag, I might be
inserting a first name and a last name,
| | 03:04 | and then pressing Enter
and inserting a company name.
| | 03:06 | Whatever I insert here, I'm inserting on
the first label. I'm going to click OK,
| | 03:11 | and there is my AddressBlock.
| | 03:13 | Let's go to Preview Results, and
what you'll see is only one label.
| | 03:17 | Don't let that bother you.
| | 03:18 | I have one more step to do.
| | 03:20 | I'm creating one label in
the upper left-hand corner.
| | 03:24 | Word is waiting for me to create it and
then to say update all the other labels
| | 03:28 | to match the one I'm creating.
| | 03:30 | When I click Update Labels,
all of them say AddressBlock.
| | 03:35 | Print the first one, go to the next
record, print the next one, go to the
| | 03:38 | next record, and so on.
| | 03:40 | Now when I preview the results, I'll
have this whole set of labels, but
| | 03:44 | notice, oh, my gosh!
| | 03:45 | They take up way too much space!
| | 03:47 | This is a formatting problem.
| | 03:48 | That's all this is. Let's go home.
| | 03:52 | Let's go ahead and select our first
label, all this text, and let's now
| | 03:58 | adjust the line spacing.
| | 04:00 | I can either choose No Spacing - that
works just fine - or I could adjust the
| | 04:04 | spacing for the lines.
| | 04:05 | Let's go back to Mailings
and update all our labels.
| | 04:09 | So, in other words, we're
not going to format 30 labels;
| | 04:12 | we're going to work on one and then use Update,
to update the other 29, each and every time.
| | 04:17 | Okay, so we've tightened up our font.
| | 04:20 | We can go ahead and preview the merge.
| | 04:21 | You can look at all the different records.
All you're doing is paging one to the next.
| | 04:26 | Here's the end of our merge. Looks good!
| | 04:30 | Now when we're all set, we would
load our label stock in the printer.
| | 04:33 | Don't forget that step.
| | 04:34 | Then we would choose Finish & Merge,
and you should go directly to Print.
| | 04:39 | If you say you want to edit individual
documents, then you'll be merging to a
| | 04:43 | file and need to turn around and
merge and print again on label stock.
| | 04:47 | So, the only reason to do that would
be if you print the same list several
| | 04:52 | times a year, a list of labels for
a committee, for example, where the
| | 04:55 | membership doesn't change.
| | 04:57 | Then you might want to edit
individual documents and save it locally.
| | 05:01 | But normally, you will just
send these to the printer.
| | 05:04 | If you say you want to print all the
records, you're printing all of your labels.
| | 05:08 | If you say that you want to print from
a certain number, the number that goes
| | 05:12 | here is the label number.
| | 05:14 | So, for example, if I wanted to print the
first page, I would do 1 to 30, not 1 to 1.
| | 05:21 | The second page is records 31 to 60, and so on.
| | 05:25 | It's really easy to create custom
labels anytime you have address data in
| | 05:30 | Microsoft Word 2010.
| | 05:33 | You can use exactly these same
methods with a data set that includes part
| | 05:37 | numbers or titles to create CD labels,
to create folder labels, whatever
| | 05:41 | labels you want to create, go buy the
product you want, and use merge in Word
| | 05:46 | 2010 to create your labels.
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| Creating a directory| 00:00 | The final type of mail merge in Word
is a directory merge, which in prior
| | 00:04 | versions of Word was called a Catalog Merge.
| | 00:08 | You can use the Directory Merge
feature to create a directory of names and
| | 00:12 | addresses, but you can also use it to
create a parts catalog or an inventory
| | 00:16 | sheet - anything where you want to take
information out of a data source and put
| | 00:20 | it in Microsoft Word.
| | 00:22 | You might take a look at using
directory merges whenever you have information
| | 00:27 | that comes out of a database where
you're not happy with how the reports look,
| | 00:31 | because by using a catalog or a directory
merge, and getting that stuff into Word,
| | 00:35 | you have access to all of Word's
formatting tools. So, let's start.
| | 00:39 | In our blank document, we'll go to the
Mailings tab, and say Start Mail Merge > Directory.
| | 00:45 | Now we need to select the data source.
| | 00:48 | So, we'll go to Select Recipients > Use
Existing List, and we're going to go to
| | 00:52 | the Exercises folder, for Chapter 2, and
go ahead and select this Prospects list
| | 00:57 | that we've been working with previously.
| | 01:00 | This is a workbook that has only one
worksheet in it, called Email Prospects, and
| | 01:03 | I'm going to say OK.
| | 01:04 | A quick review of what's in Email Prospects.
| | 01:07 | We just have some basic demographic information.
| | 01:11 | We have contact, a company name, and so on.
| | 01:15 | What I want to do is create a listing
that actually gives me information about
| | 01:18 | three different things: the full name
of the contact person, the company name,
| | 01:23 | and the state that the
company's office is located in.
| | 01:27 | There are a couple of
different ways I could do this.
| | 01:29 | I could set this up and say, all right,
I'd like to have the Contact Name, and
| | 01:35 | Insert a Merge Field, First_Name, space,
Insert a Merge Field, Last_Name.
| | 01:40 | Company Name, Insert the Merge Field
for Company_Name, and then State, and
| | 01:49 | Insert the Merge Field for State. Press Enter.
| | 01:52 | When I preview my results,
this is what it looks like.
| | 01:56 | If I go to Finish & Merge > Edit
Individual Documents, it will merge all of
| | 02:01 | these, all records, OK, and notice
that I have one item after another,
| | 02:07 | listed down the page.
| | 02:08 | Now I can format my primary document.
| | 02:11 | Let's go ahead and close
this, and throw it away.
| | 02:14 | I could add, for example, another line
feed here, or I could select and format
| | 02:20 | this information to move it
closer together, with no spacing.
| | 02:23 | However, what I'd like to do is
present this information in a table.
| | 02:26 | That's going to be far more useful to me.
| | 02:28 | So, I'm going to delete my field
codes and insert a table and return to the
| | 02:34 | Mailings tab and insert my
merge fields, First Name, space, Last Name.
| | 02:40 | I'm going to turn preview off, so
I can actually see the field codes.
| | 02:45 | Then in my second cell of my table,
Company Name, and in the third cell of my
| | 02:50 | table, I'm going to put the State name.
| | 02:52 | I'll give Company Name a
little more space. Looks good!
| | 02:57 | Let's go ahead and Finish & Merge to
individual documents, so we can go see the
| | 03:01 | results of the merge.
| | 03:04 | Choose All records, click OK, and
here's my table, the results of my database
| | 03:08 | dumped here, so that I can format it
in a way that I want to work with it.
| | 03:13 | Now, a couple of thoughts.
| | 03:15 | I'd like to have some column headings.
| | 03:16 | That gets a little bit tricky, because
in a directory merge, anything I put in
| | 03:21 | the body of the document shows up here.
| | 03:23 | Let's go ahead and close this Merge
Results document. We don't need it.
| | 03:27 | Discard it to return to our primary document.
| | 03:29 | Let me show you what I mean.
| | 03:31 | If I insert a new row above, and I
simply put Name, Company, and State here, and
| | 03:39 | then we Finish & Merge again, OK,
notice that I have Name, Company, State;
| | 03:47 | Name, Company, State;
| | 03:48 | Name, Company, State.
| | 03:49 | Anything in the body of the documents repeats.
| | 03:51 | Let's throw the results of
this Merge away, not save them.
| | 03:55 | What I'd like to do then is I'd like
to take these headings and put them
| | 03:58 | somewhere where they won't repeat.
| | 04:01 | Because anything in the body of the
document repeats, what I need to do is move
| | 04:05 | them, so that I have them sitting
up in my header or down in my footer.
| | 04:08 | Those are the parts of the
document that aren't part of the body.
| | 04:11 | So, I'm going to go ahead and delete
this row, and we're going to insert a
| | 04:16 | header in this document
that's simply a blank header.
| | 04:20 | Now I'll go to the Insert tab, drop in a
three-column table, just like the one I
| | 04:25 | have, adjust it so it matches up with
the table below, and let's go ahead and
| | 04:30 | put then Contact Name, Company Name, and State.
| | 04:37 | I can do any other
formatting I wish. That all works.
| | 04:40 | Let's go back to the Mailings tab
now and double-click in the body of our
| | 04:45 | document to close the header.
| | 04:47 | I could have closed the
header on the Insert tab as well.
| | 04:50 | Choose Finish & Merge > Edit
Individual Documents, click OK, and here's my
| | 04:56 | header that doesn't repeat
| | 04:57 | and my directory that does repeat.
| | 05:00 | There isn't a week that goes by that I
don't find a use for directory merge.
| | 05:04 | It's rarely used - it's not the
first thing folks think of - but it's an
| | 05:09 | incredibly useful tool in Word 2010.
| | 05:11 | So, as you work with data sources,
don't forget that there's a great way to
| | 05:17 | create whatever types of listings you
want for data in your data sources using
| | 05:22 | Word 2010's Directory Merge feature.
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|
|
3. Using Rules for Customized MergesPrompting for global input with FILLIN| 00:01 | Most organizations have letters that
are sent out periodically, with very little
| | 00:05 | change from one letter to the next.
| | 00:07 | For example, you might send out a
monthly meeting reminder, where the only
| | 00:12 | changes are the dates, the locations,
and the roles of the various people
| | 00:15 | attending the meeting.
| | 00:17 | Words Fill-in fields allow you to
enter information and merge letters at
| | 00:22 | the time of the merge, eliminating the
need to create a different letter reach month.
| | 00:27 | Here's another version of our
simple letter, inviting team members to
| | 00:31 | our monthly meeting.
| | 00:33 | The meeting moves between locations and
changes dates, and people's roles change.
| | 00:38 | So we'll be using Fill-in and Ask in the
next three videos to see how to address
| | 00:43 | these different needs for
this particular merge letter.
| | 00:47 | The date that the letter is sent is
different each month, and the same for each user.
| | 00:52 | The date of the meeting is different
each month, and the same for each user.
| | 00:56 | So we're going to use Fill-
in as a global replacement.
| | 01:01 | Let's begin by selecting the state,
and deleting it, and now on the Mailings
| | 01:06 | tab, in Write and Insert Fields,
we'll choose Rules > Fill-in.
| | 01:12 | The Insert Word Field:
| | 01:13 | Fill-in dialog box opens,
and we can enter a Prompt.
| | 01:16 | Now, we could enter next to nothing
here if we were the only people using this
| | 01:20 | merge letter, but we want to create this in
a way that other people could use it as well.
| | 01:25 | So, I'm going to enter, "Fill in the
mailing date for this meeting reminder."
| | 01:34 | If there was a default date, like if we
only had the meeting twice a year, and
| | 01:38 | we could put August 24, but we don't.
| | 01:40 | We use it all the time.
| | 01:41 | So there's no point in a default fill-in date.
| | 01:44 | And I'm going to say ask once, because
it's the same for everyone, and I'll click OK.
| | 01:49 | As soon as I do, I'll be prompted the first time.
| | 01:52 | There's the prompt that I entered, and
the meeting date is August 24, 2010, and
| | 01:58 | I am going to click OK.
| | 02:00 | If I press Enter here, by the way,
there'll be an extra Enter in my letter, so I
| | 02:04 | want to be careful not to do that.
| | 02:06 | Now I want to replace the
text for the meeting date.
| | 02:09 | So I'm going to select this magenta text
that I highlighted earlier and delete it.
| | 02:15 | I'll need to put a space, and then
we're going to use Rules > Fill-in and say
| | 02:20 | Enter the meeting date.
| | 02:22 | There is no generic meeting date to
use as a default, and I only want to be
| | 02:27 | asked once because it's
the same in every letter.
| | 02:29 | Now I am going to click OK, and it
says, Enter the meeting date, and I'm going
| | 02:33 | to say September 22, 2010.
| | 02:37 | I don't need to put a period here.
| | 02:39 | It's already out here in the letter, and
I'm going to click OK. That looks good.
| | 02:44 | Now, I could save this letter now, if I
wish, and then I can do Finish and Merge.
| | 02:49 | So, let's just go ahead and run the
merge first, to make sure that we're
| | 02:52 | comfortable with everything
we have and how it's working.
| | 02:54 | I'm going to choose Finish & Merge > Edit
Individual Documents so that it merges to
| | 02:59 | another document we can look at.
| | 03:00 | I am going to merge all of the
records and click OK, and it says, What's the
| | 03:06 | meeting date for this meeting reminder?
| | 03:08 | It holds the last date that I entered, so I
don't even need to enter a new date this time.
| | 03:12 | I'll click OK. It says Enter the actual
meeting date, and again, it holds the value that I
| | 03:17 | entered a moment ago.
| | 03:19 | Notice that in each letter, August 24,
September 22, all the way through,
| | 03:26 | each letter uses of the variable
dates that we entered. Look's good to me.
| | 03:30 | Let's go ahead and throw this letter away.
| | 03:33 | There are couple of little
things I'd like to take care of.
| | 03:35 | I actually don't need to have
this formatting here any more.
| | 03:37 | So we can remove it.
| | 03:41 | The formatting that we have on the
fields can go as well, but we're going to
| | 03:43 | save that until the entire letter is done.
| | 03:46 | So by using Fill-in, I can actually
insert one date in every single letter
| | 03:51 | that's exactly the same and
| | 03:52 | therefore create a generic letter that
I can use over and over and over again,
| | 03:56 | if all that changes are the dates.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Prompting for repeating input with ASK| 00:00 | The Microsoft Word merge field Ask is
similar to Fill-in, but it has a couple of
| | 00:06 | different behaviors.
| | 00:08 | Fill-in takes a piece of data entered by
the user and sticks it into each letter.
| | 00:13 | Ask creates a bookmark to hold the text
temporarily and stores that user-entered
| | 00:20 | value in the bookmark.
| | 00:22 | Then you add a corresponding Ref field,
a reference field, that says go grab the
| | 00:27 | value that the user put in that
bookmark and stuff it into the letter where I
| | 00:31 | place the Ref field.
| | 00:33 | Here is why we will use Ask.
| | 00:36 | The location of the meeting
occurs twice in the letter.
| | 00:39 | The first time it's listed in paragraph
one, the second time in paragraph three.
| | 00:44 | Now if we were lazy, we could use Fill-
in and say location one, location two and
| | 00:49 | enter the same information twice, but if we
misspell it once, it's going to look icky.
| | 00:53 | We're going to use the Ask field to ask
the user at the time of merge, where is
| | 00:58 | the meeting going to be held?
| | 00:59 | Then we'll drop in two reference fields to
drop that information into the letter twice.
| | 01:05 | The only part of this that we care
about, in terms of a sequence, is that the Ask
| | 01:08 | field has to be placed in the letter
prior to any reference to the Ask field.
| | 01:13 | So I'll generally go right to the
top the letter and do something like
| | 01:16 | Ctrl+Home to get as high in the letter as I
can before we place this Ask field in our letter.
| | 01:22 | So we're going to go ahead and on the
Mailings tab in the Write & Insert Fields
| | 01:27 | area, we're going to choose Rules > Ask.
| | 01:30 | It says Insert Word Field: Ask.
| | 01:32 | This is for the meeting location.
| | 01:34 | So we give the bookmark a name, Location.
| | 01:38 | And because it will be the same for
every letter, we're going to send everybody
| | 01:41 | to meeting in the same place,
| | 01:43 | we're going to only ask once.
| | 01:45 | The prompt will be Enter
the location for the meeting.
| | 01:49 | Now if most meetings are held at
Corporate Headquarters, we could put that in
| | 01:53 | this default bookmark text.
| | 01:55 | So, let's just go ahead and
say most meetings are there.
| | 01:58 | So we'll put in a bookmark. That's a default.
| | 02:01 | If I don't enter anything else,
it will say Corporate Headquarters.
| | 02:05 | Let's go ahead and say OK, and we will
be prompted, and we'll say, okay, the
| | 02:09 | meeting is going to be at
Corporate Headquarters, and say OK.
| | 02:11 | Now, absolutely nothing happens, except
that value has been stuffed into a bookmark.
| | 02:16 | We now need to place two reference fields to
reflect that information back in the document.
| | 02:22 | The first will go here.
| | 02:23 | So I'm simply going to delete
where it says Corporate Headquarters.
| | 02:27 | You'll notice, if we look at the
rules list, there is no reference here.
| | 02:30 | This is a field that's not included
on the default list of merge fields.
| | 02:34 | To go get it, we'll have
to go to the Insert tab.
| | 02:37 | So let's go to Insert > Quick Parts >
Field to open the list of all the fields
| | 02:43 | that are available to us
when we work automating Word.
| | 02:46 | As I scroll down the list, you'll
find Ref here, which is a reference, and
| | 02:50 | it says, okay, if you're going to insert a
reference, what bookmark are you referring to?
| | 02:55 | I'll say location.
| | 02:57 | Now notice that I need to be at the
right place in my letter in order to do this,
| | 03:00 | because it's going to insert
the reference right where I am.
| | 03:03 | There are number of different options I can use.
| | 03:06 | For example, I can have users enter a value,
and then I can format it in the way I choose.
| | 03:12 | I can have incrementing numbers that
appear, but I just want to grab this
| | 03:16 | reference and stuff it back in the letter.
| | 03:17 | If you want to look at these other
options, I recommend them to you, because you
| | 03:21 | can do some exciting things with them.
| | 03:22 | I am going to say OK, and notice
Corporate Headquarters got dropped there.
| | 03:27 | And I can tell I need a space here,
| | 03:28 | so I am going to put space.
| | 03:30 | Let's go add a reference for
the second time that this appears.
| | 03:34 | I am going to simply select this text
and delete it, Insert > Quick Parts >
| | 03:40 | Field, scroll down to Ref, or hit R to
get down there quicker, Location > OK,
| | 03:49 | Corporate Headquarters again,
and add my space in the letter.
| | 03:53 | That's all the harder it is to be able to
use Ask and Ref together to be able to
| | 03:58 | insert information here in my merge letter.
| | 04:02 | Now, I want to show you one other
thing, as we start adding these fields in.
| | 04:05 | There is a shortcut key that
you can use to see the fields.
| | 04:08 | It's Alt and then F9.
| | 04:10 | So when I do Alt+F9, I'll actually
see all of the fields that are in my
| | 04:14 | letter, and that's helpful.
| | 04:15 | Here's the Ask that I did.
| | 04:17 | Ask for a location. There's the prompt.
| | 04:20 | There's the default,
| | 04:21 | followed by the Fill-in, which was
to fill in the date for the meeting.
| | 04:25 | We did that in an earlier video.
| | 04:27 | Then down in the text, notice in
the body, a reference to location, a
| | 04:32 | reference to location.
| | 04:33 | When you simply highlight the merge fields,
those Ref and Ask fields won't show up.
| | 04:37 | So you'll want to remember that Alt+F9 will
display or hide all of those field codes.
| | 04:44 | Let's go ahead and save our letter.
| | 04:46 | I am going to do File > Save As, and I
am going to save this as Cover Location.
| | 04:52 | Now let's merge this and
see how it actually works.
| | 04:55 | Remember that if you weren't with us in
the last video, we were prompting for a
| | 04:59 | couple Fill-ins as well.
| | 05:00 | So Edit Individual Documents > Merge them all.
| | 05:03 | It says, where is the location for this meeting?
| | 05:05 | I am going to say Bali, because we deserve it,
| | 05:07 | actually, Tahiti, because my
friend Jeff likes going their.
| | 05:11 | So we're going to choose Tahiti and click OK.
| | 05:14 | This is a Fill-in the date for
the meeting. August 24 is fine.
| | 05:19 | Fill-in the date here, and now we've
picked up the date, but also Tahiti is
| | 05:24 | going to appear in two
locations in every single letter.
| | 05:28 | There's our first letter, as we
scroll down, our second letter.
| | 05:32 | So we can use Ask to grab information
and place it as many locations as we
| | 05:37 | wish in a document.
| | 05:39 | Think about using Ask for things
like contracts, where you need to fill in
| | 05:44 | information about both parties in a contract.
| | 05:47 | By using Ask, we can allow the user to
enter variable information on the fly at
| | 05:53 | the start of the mail merge,
rather than having to enter all of this
| | 05:56 | information in the data source.
| | 05:58 | And this makes Word mail
merge very, very powerful.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Prompting for individual input with FILLIN| 00:00 | In the previous two videos, we've used
Microsoft Word's Ask and Fill-in fields to
| | 00:06 | collect information from the user at
runtime to insert into the letter about
| | 00:11 | the location of our meeting, the date of
the letter, and the date of the meeting.
| | 00:15 | We are left with one piece of
information that we need to provide at runtime,
| | 00:19 | but it's different for each and every recipient.
| | 00:22 | That's the role of that recipient we will
play in the meeting, highlighted here in teal.
| | 00:27 | For our team, we have three basic roles.
| | 00:29 | We have the role of the convener, we
have the role of the recorder, and we have
| | 00:33 | a role for a timekeeper.
Everyone else is an observer.
| | 00:37 | So, what we'd like to do is, at the time
we do the merge, be prompted to determine
| | 00:41 | the role for each of our team
members at this specific meeting.
| | 00:46 | We're going to use a variation of the
Fill-in field to be able to do this.
| | 00:50 | So, let's start by deleting this
information here for the observer, and now
| | 00:57 | we'll use Rules > Fill-in
and say, "Enter the meeting role."
| | 01:04 | Now, the Default role is observer,
so we could simply enter that here.
| | 01:10 | We're not going to click the Ask once check box.
| | 01:12 | We are simply going to leave it,
because we want to be asked for every single
| | 01:16 | recipient, and we are going to click OK.
| | 01:19 | We will, of course, be prompted,
right away, and enter observer, and that
| | 01:23 | information will be entered here, and
we can see that we need to enter a space.
| | 01:27 | Now, don't forget, you can use Alt+F9
to see the field codes that are already
| | 01:31 | here, and Alt+F9 to hide them again.
| | 01:35 | Let's go ahead and see how our merge
works, and I will tell you ahead of time
| | 01:38 | that this will be an unsatisfactory
experience, because as we merge through and
| | 01:43 | say that we want to merge all the
records, we'll be prompted for a location, and
| | 01:47 | we'll put Tahiti and say OK and then
the mailing date for the reminder and the
| | 01:52 | meeting date itself,
| | 01:53 | then it says, Enter the meeting
role, and we say, hmm, for who?
| | 01:58 | We will be prompted over and over
again to enter the meeting role.
| | 02:01 | It doesn't matter whether we say
OK or Cancel; we'll be prompted.
| | 02:04 | I'm just thankful that we didn't have
500 records, or we'd be clicking OK
| | 02:07 | 500 times right now.
| | 02:10 | So, how do I get
information about what letter I'm on?
| | 02:13 | Well, let's close this merge results
and not save it and return to our primary
| | 02:19 | merge file we are building, and let's
go back and take a look at the field
| | 02:22 | code for observer here.
| | 02:24 | We are going to hold Alt and hit F9,
and it says, Enter the meeting role.
| | 02:29 | We want to add the merge field that
gives us the person's first name, and it is
| | 02:33 | absolutely critical that
it go inside the prompt.
| | 02:37 | The prompt starts after the word
"FILLIN" and after the quotes and ends with the
| | 02:42 | other set of quotes.
| | 02:43 | So, I'm going to say Enter the meeting
role, space, for, and then I am going to insert
| | 02:48 | the merge field to pick up that person's name.
| | 02:51 | First, space, and even the Last name.
| | 02:55 | So, now my prompt in quotes is
Enter the meeting role for First, Last.
| | 03:02 | This /d is the default, and it
will put the observer in, and then this
| | 03:06 | MERGEFIELD first comes from our
original merge that's dropping the recipient's
| | 03:10 | first name right here.
| | 03:11 | So, it says, Thank you for agreeing to
serve as your role for the meeting ,first name.
| | 03:15 | I think we are all set.
| | 03:17 | We've built this out, so that we
can actually see where we are.
| | 03:20 | Let's go to Finish & Merge > Edit
Individual Letters, and let's go ahead and
| | 03:24 | just do the first three letters
so we can see what they look like.
| | 03:27 | It says, where is the
location for the meeting? Tahiti, OK.
| | 03:33 | The mailing date for the
reminder the 26th of August.
| | 03:36 | Well, we might get it done a day early.
| | 03:37 | Let's go ahead and mail it, if
we could, on the 25th, and say OK.
| | 03:43 | The meeting date hasn't changed from
September 22, and now it says Enter the
| | 03:47 | meeting role for Pam Shepherd.
| | 03:49 | Well, Pam has agreed to be our
Timekeeper, and we'll say OK.
| | 03:53 | Then Enter the meeting role for Tyrone Woods.
| | 03:55 | Well Tyrone is the
Convener for this meeting, OK.
| | 03:59 | Keisha is an Observer, and we'll say OK.
| | 04:02 | So, you notice for each
person, we are getting prompted.
| | 04:05 | There we have Pam the Timekeeper,
Tyrone the Convener for the meeting, and
| | 04:10 | Keisha who's going to be an Observer.
| | 04:13 | So, by using the Ask field, or the Fill-
in fields, but also including the merge
| | 04:18 | fields in the prompts, we can be
prompted, as we go through the merge, to provide
| | 04:22 | very specific, individualized
information for each and every recipient.
| | 04:27 | I am going to go ahead and close these
merge results and not save them, return
| | 04:31 | to the Mailings tab, and let you have
one more look at where we inserted the
| | 04:36 | name inside of the quotes as part
of the prompt for the Fill-in fields.
| | 04:41 | Remember, Alt+F9 exposes all of these
field codes for you to be able to go in
| | 04:45 | and look, and also to edit them.
| | 04:48 | By using Ask and asking with every
letter, we can enter variable information on
| | 04:53 | the fly, rather than needing to
build it into our data source.
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| Using IF...THEN...ELSE for intelligent merging| 00:01 | Almost any mail merge will work better
if you use IF fields to add some logic.
| | 00:06 | Actually, let me say that another way.
| | 00:08 | If you know how to use IF, you'll be
able to create mail merges that you
| | 00:12 | wouldn't have imagined you could create.
| | 00:14 | With IF, you can direct Word to
examine the data for the record being merged,
| | 00:19 | then take a specific action
based on the value in the record.
| | 00:23 | For example, if your data source
contains address information, you could send
| | 00:28 | one paragraph to recipients in
California and a different paragraph, or no
| | 00:32 | paragraph at all, to recipients in another state.
| | 00:35 | At its simplest, an IF field works like this:
| | 00:39 | if a condition is met, display one
result; otherwise display another.
| | 00:44 | That's what we want to do here.
| | 00:46 | We have a paragraph that we'd
actually like to direct only to folks who are
| | 00:49 | outside of California,
| | 00:51 | the folks who will be coming
from out of state for our meeting.
| | 00:54 | Now, we could type it in the letter.
| | 00:56 | We could say, if you're from out of state,
then we want to make it even easier.
| | 00:59 | But it's kind of cool not to even show
that information to folks unless they need it.
| | 01:04 | So, I'm going to select this text,
and let's turn off the highlighting that
| | 01:11 | let you identify it, and now let's cut it,
because we're going to use it again in a minute.
| | 01:15 | So, I am going to cut it to the
clipboard, add a space right here where I am
| | 01:21 | going to want to insert my IF
field, and then, this is incredibly easy.
| | 01:25 | Let's go to Mailings > Rules > IF...Then.
..Else, and we're going to say, IF the
| | 01:32 | Business State Not equal to California.
| | 01:36 | Now, it helps to know how your
information is in your data source.
| | 01:40 | IF it's CA, just the state abbreviation,
| | 01:43 | I would only put CA here, but it's actually
California, spelled out, in our data source.
| | 01:48 | A clue for that would be just to take
a look here, by moving my dialog box, and
| | 01:52 | notice in this letter where I am previewing
the results, that the state names are spelled out.
| | 01:57 | So, it says, IF the state name is not
equal to California, then, and I'm going
| | 02:01 | to hit Ctrl+V to paste my text.
| | 02:03 | We want to make it even easier for out-
of-state team members to participate:
| | 02:07 | Jeff Jones is handling your housing and
transportation, and will contact you directly.
| | 02:12 | Otherwise, insert this text. Well, I
don't have any text for the folks who are in
| | 02:15 | California, nothing that fits here.
| | 02:18 | I could say, aren't you lucky to live in California,
but there's no point in doing that in this letter.
| | 02:22 | So, I now have an IF, and there is no
Then, so I am going to say OK, and IF I
| | 02:29 | hold Alt+F9, I can see my field code,
and you'll notice that we have an IF
| | 02:34 | field right here now.
| | 02:36 | It looks kind of small, and it actually is.
| | 02:38 | This font is smaller than the font around
it. We'll take care of that in the minute.
| | 02:43 | Let's go ahead to Finish & Merge and
Edit Individual letters, so we can see the
| | 02:47 | results of our merge.
| | 02:48 | We don't have to do all of them, but we
might as well, and I am going to click
| | 02:52 | OK, and we'll be prompted.
| | 02:54 | Now, in the last few videos, we've added a lot of
controls, a lot of fields, to our merge letter.
| | 03:00 | So first we are asked, where is our
meeting going to be, and we are going to
| | 03:03 | meet in Tahiti, and click OK.
| | 03:06 | The mailing date will be August 25
for our invitation, the meeting date is
| | 03:11 | September 22, and we'll be asked the
roles of different persons, and we'll
| | 03:15 | just make them all Observers as we go along,
because that's not what we are focused on here.
| | 03:21 | What we are focused on is that when we
get to someone in California, they won't
| | 03:24 | have that extra sentence.
| | 03:26 | However, when we scroll down, for example,
and look at Tyrone who's coming from New York,
| | 03:30 | there is that:
| | 03:31 | We want to make it even easier for out
-of-town team members to participate.
| | 03:36 | IF you're in California, we are not going
to see that sentence. Keisha doesn't see it.
| | 03:40 | However, Peter does,
because he's coming from Phoenix.
| | 03:44 | Now, I told you that the
font was a little smaller.
| | 03:47 | We are going to take care of
that in the primary merge letters.
| | 03:50 | Let's go ahead and close
the results of this merge.
| | 03:52 | We don't need them, and
here, where we can see the text,
| | 03:56 | we can actually go in and format it.
| | 03:58 | So, if I click on the Home tab of the
Ribbon, you'll note that we are using a
| | 04:03 | Calibri 12 pretty
consistently throughout our letter.
| | 04:05 | So, let's just select this text and
make sure that it also is a Calibri 12, and
| | 04:11 | that will take care of the issue.
| | 04:14 | IF is a very powerful function. You can
use it as many times as you wish, within
| | 04:17 | a letter, to be able to make a
distinction between one set of data and another,
| | 04:22 | based on a value that's read from the
data source at the time of the merge.
| | 04:26 | Once you've mastered IF, you'll find
more reasons to use mail merge, and far
| | 04:32 | fewer reasons to type
individual letters to groups of people.
| | 04:36 | Enjoy mail merge in Word 2010.
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