What is mailing in microsoft word

I would like to show you some basics you can do with
Mailings in MS Word. It´s quite handy feature you can use for creating envelopes, labels, personalized letters etc.

First question could be
what is this feature good for?
Mailing can really help you and save a lot of time when you are working with some database and data from this database has to be placed in some document. In this way you can create, let say, rule how and which data will be used.

Because I really like to explain on examples from real word, not a theory, I do it also now. There is a database of customers I want to wish Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, because they are top customers. I will send them a letter, but I do not like to write
Dear Sir/Madame, I want to be more personal so I will write their names. This I can do manually – copy/paste – what could be good way, but not in case I have 100 customers like that, or 1000 (if I am a big company), so there is a place for Mailing.

So
what I need to do, basically 2 things:

•      Write a letter

•      Database (e.g. in excel)

Word text

I will write the letter as normally I do, except words which won’t be «static», in this case name and surname will be such a dynamic words. See sample:

As you can see there is a part of letter where company is sending to customer, but there is missing name and surname next to «Dear». These 2 words will be added from database and will be changed dynamically.

Database

In this example it will be Excel table (which is very common type of DB, I guess) where are just 2 columns – Name and surname, see on the picture

Now we can start to merge these two documents. In Word go to Mailings tab and click Select Recipients>Use Existing List … (because we have our own DB)

Then just browse your DB and click Open

Another window appears, which asks you in which sheet in this excel is your table (in my case it is in Sheet1)

When you confirm sheet by OK it seems nothing happens, because there is no change in the document – visually. By these steps you connected Word with the database and you can work with it in next steps. This also enables more options in Mailing tab which were greyed out before

Now, finally, we can define Name and Surname fields to the letter. It’s a simple process, place the cursor where this Name and Surname should come and insert the fields – easy to say, but I will show you. After «Dear» word I do space and insert field for name by clicking Insert Merge field > Name

As you can see there are two options – Name and Surname – so this is a list of words from excel table headers. Click Name, put space and with the same procedure add also Surname. Result looks like this

And basically that’s it. You can switch between «code» and real words with Preview Results button

So with pressed Preview Results it will show you first record from the excel database

If you want to see next records just click Next/Previous records represented with blue arrows, or type number you want to jump on

At the end you will probably want to print these letters. For this action press Finish & Merge button and choose Print documents …

You can choose if you want to print letter for each record in database (All), only the one you see (Current record) or range (From-To)

Then just choose printer and that´s it.

This is how mailing works in MS Word. But I would like to show some also something advanced. I will stay with this example, just expand database with gender. This would be useful if you want to write Mr. or Mrs, based on gender. Database is like

Again I will broswe for excel database and you can see Gender appears in the list

So Word has now connection with updated database and can read also Gender data. But how to tell Word to use «Dear Mr.» if man, and «Dear Mrs.» If woman? For this we have Rules field in Mailing tab

And suitable option under Rules in this case is «If … Then … Else …»

Place your cursor next to «Dear» and choose «If … Then … Else …» Rule. Table with contitions appears. Choose propriate Field name (in our example Gender), Comparison (in our example Equal to) and Compare to (in our example M). Then fulfill text which will be added if the conditions are correct (in our example Mr.) and another text if they are not (in our example Mrs.). See also on the picture

Then you click OK, and when you will switch record by record not only name and surname will change, but also Mr./Mrs.

Of course you can format also these «dynamic» fields in the same way as normal text in Word, so you can set color, font, font size, bold etc

.

This is not everything Mailings in Word can do, at least you see how many rules are available and each can do something. This tutorial wants to be a start point, to show you how to use this feature in MS Word.

— helpfinder —

While there are a lot of things I don’t like about Microsoft Word, there are many more things I love about it. In particular, I love the ability to automate many of the tasks that you do often. One of those tasks is sending reports or emails. Most of us are faced with a job where you have to send a report to an entire team of people, so you find yourself spending hours writing up email after email.

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While there are a lot of things I don’t like about Microsoft Word, there are many more things I love about it. In particular, I like how flexible the drawing tools are, the included templates for things like letters and resumes, and most of all, I love the ability to automate many of the tasks that you do often. One of those tasks is sending reports or emails.

Most of us are faced with a job where you have to send a report to an entire team of people. What makes this worse sometimes is that you have to send individually tailored emails to each person with specific information pertaining to them. Maybe 80 to 90% of the verbiage is the same, but that 10 or 20% specific to the person is unique — so you find yourself spending hours writing up email after email.

Sending Automated Emails

In the past, I wrote about how you could automate Google Analytics to send out scheduled reports, which you could then pass on to your boss or client. But the form of automation that I’m going to show you today is a little different. Instead of producing the data for you, Word is going to automatically fill in the details about the person on your contact list, while allowing you to quickly fill in the data or information that you want to send to that person. This makes the email feel personal and direct, but at the same time you aren’t spending hours writing up tens or hundreds of personal, direct emails.

To get started, in Word (in my examples it’s Word 2007), click on «Mailings» and then click «Start Mail Merge.»

The Wizard isn’t necessary, but it’s nice because it helps you to remember everything you need to do. First, pick a template that you’d like to use for your generic report.

Word has a lot of good styles and layouts. Once you choose your template, just click OK. Now your entire report is written for you, all you have to do is fill in the text. When it comes to the date, make sure to choose «today» so that the document always uses today’s date every time you recreate it later.

When you choose your recipient list to receive these emails, you can use your current Outlook contacts, a current contact list that you’ve exported from somewhere else, or create a new list of contacts.

In my example, I’ve selected recipients from my current Outlook contacts.

Now that you have your recipients selected, you’re going to tell the document what information to pull out of the Contacts information and automatically embed into the report. You do this by clicking on the «Insert Merge Field» button.

For example, I’m creating a report about a specific website for a client, so I’ve defined that website in their Contact details, and here I’m telling Word to use that URL in the report.

If you’re using Outlook, don’t forget that Outlook Contacts offers User Fields, where you can insert any information you want for that person.

This is useful when the information you want to embed for that person isn’t found in the Contact List fields.

The coolest thing about the Microsoft Word Mailings is that you basically create «fill-in» fields for the parts of the report that are unique for each person.

So as you’re writing the generic message and you get to a place where you have to write something that would have specific data relevant to that person, just click on «Rules» and choose «Fill-in«. This lets you define the prompt question and a default answer. What will happen is when you load up your automated document, it will prompt you to fill in every single one of the fill-in fields for each recipient.

Once you’re finished creating your automated mailing, your document will consist of some fields that automatically fill in based on recipient Contact details, and other fields will fill in based on what you’ve specified for information.

For each document, you can quickly send out the email report from Word by clicking the Outlook button on the upper right part of the screen, choosing «Send Email» (or send as PDF attachment), and you’re done!

Using this technique, you’ll cut down your correspondence work by at least 50% or more. Up front it’ll take you some time to get the document set up perfectly, but every week or month that you need to issue the report, you’ll be very happy that you put in the effort.

Give Microsoft Word Mailings a shot and let us know how it went. Did it save you time? Share your own experiences with it in the comments section below!

Image credit: clix at sxc.hu

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