Y8 Ict Mailmerge

Year 8 ICT

Creating a mail merge with MS Word & MS Excel

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1. Terms and definitions 1. Mail Merge To create a set of documents that are essentially the same but where each document contains unique elements. For example, in a letter that announces a new product, your company logo and the text about the product will appear in each letter, while the address and greeting line will be different. A school report where the information about the subjects studied is on the boilerplate, but the details for each student comes from the data file. 2. Boilerplate The boilerplate is a term that refers to text that is reused. In our school report any text, graphics or lines, shapes, tables etc that appears on all reports would be the boilerplate. 3. External data file To make use of the boilerplate, individualized data has to be applied to produce each document, e.g. a letter, report or envelope. This data is stored in an external data file, which could be an Excel worksheet, a Word table or a database query. 2. Steps to complete a mail merge 1. Open MS Excel 1. In ROW 1 In each column type in the name that you want to refer to the column by. Keep the name short and simple, and do not include any spaces in the name. To identify different words in the name use a CapitalLetter 2. Complete each row of detail Each row represents 1 letter that will be generated. The detail in the columns will be substituted into the boilerplate 3. Save the file 2. Open Ms Word 1. Save the file Make sure that the filename makes it clear that this is the boilerplate for your mail merge - use bp at the end of the name before the .doc 2. Go to Tools | Letters and Mailings | Mail merge A window will pop up to the right of the screen. There are 6 stages in creating your mail merge letter. These are explained below.

What you need to do 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Create a letter to invite the Principal to the School Bazaar. Create an Excel spreadsheet with 5 names and address details. Modify the letter to the Principal to include fields from the file in the boiler plate. Mail merge and check your results on screen. Print the file

Due for submission Wed 30th September PRBreach

Sept 2009

Year 8 ICT

For now we are working with LETTERS

PRBreach

Creating a mail merge with MS Word & MS Excel

Here you browse to the file you created in Excel – the external data file.

MORE ITEMS shows the spreadsheet columns. Column headings are used, or if there is no heading, f1 f99. Click the field name and INSERT to add it to the boilerplate

Sept 2009

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DO NOT use print. Always edit the individual documents to make sure they look like you expect – size, fields in right place etc