Mail Merging in office word 2007

Mail  Merging in Microsoft office Word 2007

Word processing: Mail Merge

Mail merging is a straight forward process of combining 2 documents into one. It is the process in which two different documents that is, the body of the letter and the recipient addresses are created independently and later merged into one single document. The documents maintain their independence and can each be edited without affecting the other. The technology is known as mail merging.

Mail merging help ease the burden of typing and sending several letters to different recipients especially if the contents of the letter is identical.

The reason why you should consider using mail merging especially when you want to send the same letter to a group of people in different locations is that it will help arrange and organise the whole process.

For example imagine you are working for a water and sewerage company as a secretary. As a secretary your work involves notifying your clients each and every month about their water bills, previous balances etc. The bill has to have a consistent predefined format, style and your company's address field somewhere in the far left or right top of the document that is reflected on all letters sent to your clients save for few fields of information like <<Date Due>>, <<Bill Balance>> etc.

In other applications the <<Date Due>> and <<Bill Balance>> are stored in a database file and are called into the main document. In Word processing applications like Microsoft office word, the process involves 2 documents namely Data source and Main document. The Data source is the document containing information specific to each client, like the <<Title>>, <<Address>>, <<Client name>>, <<Bill Balance>> etc.

The Data source can be a plain text file, database file, or a document you created see Creating a Data source file.

The Main document can be explained as the Standardized letter which you will use to insert special instructions called merge fields where you want the contents of your data source to appear.