What is Mail Merge?

Mail Merge is a function which enables you to send out one email or letter to multiple recipients at once. It is quick and easy to do, and is a vital time saving function.

How do I do it?

The following instructions relate to Microsoft Word 2010. If you are using a different version the steps will be similar but there may be slight differences between what you see and the images in this post.

STEP 1 – Open Microsoft Word and select the ‘Mailings’ tab. Click ‘Start Mail Merge’ and select either an email or a letter.

STEP 2 – ‘Select Recipients’ and either type in your contacts or use an existing list. If you manually type in your recipients you will then be asked to save the list which is useful if you need to send to the same people in future.

STEP 3 – It is now a good idea to ‘Edit Recipient List’ and check that all contacts are entered correctly.

STEP 4 – Now add the recipient’s name to the top of the letter or email. Place your cursor at the top of the letter and click ‘Insert Merge Field’. This allows you to insert a contact name, company name or any other piece of information you choose.

STEP 5 – Selected the name you want and you will notice that your letter now begins ‘Dear *First Name*’ or something similar. Use the ‘Preview Results’ button to see if the names are inserted correctly by using the blue arrows to scroll through the listed recipients.

STEP 6 – When you are happy with the preview click ‘Finish and Merge’ then select ‘Send E-Mail Messages’ or ‘Send Letters’.

This will prompt a pop-up box as shown below.

In the first drop-down menu select ‘email address’ then choose your email subject and select the format in which you want your email to appear – normally this would be HTML. You then have the option to send to all contacts entered in step 2 or a selection of them.

You have now sent a single message to multiple recipients, all in 6 easy steps.

Contact us at sales AT flint-it DOT com for a PDF version of this ‘How To’ which you can pin to your office notice board so that everyone in your office can save valuable time with this easy to learn solution.

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