Overview:

To create a mail-merged document, you will create three separate documents:

• An Excel spreadsheet containing data to be interested into a letter
• A Word document that contains <<placeholders>>
• A Word document that contains the letter or labels that will be merged with the data in the Excel document to cerate individualized documents.
• Create the Excel document first, the placeholder letter second, then merge the two to create the individualized document.

To create the Excel document:

1. Open Excel
2. Create appropriate categories in a row near the top of the document, (Example: first name, last name, street address, city, state, zip, phone, etc.) Keep your category names short.
3. Add data for each record. (Example: Jane Doe, 141 North Main Street, Phoenix, AZ, 85003, 623-5555-1212)
4. Save your document with an appropriate name. (Example: classdb, or xmaslist, or Cdlist)

To create the Word <<placeholder>> document:

1. Open Word
2. Choose Mail Merge from the Tools Window. The Mail Merge Helper Dialog Box will appear.
3. Choose Create Main Document
4. Write a letter containing all the information that will remain the same in all letters.
5. Save your document. (Example: Letter to Parents, Xmas labels, etc.) Be sure to use a DIFFERENT name than that of your Excel document.
6. To insert your placeholders:
   • Choose Mail Merge from the Tools Window
   • The Mail Merge Helper Dialog Box will appear
   • Choose Get Data
   • Select your spreadsheet
   • Another Mail Merge Dialog Box will appear showing each of your categories.
   • Place your cursor in the appropriate place and insert your placeholder by selecting a category.
   • Your placeholder will appear in this format <<firstname>>. The carets will appear automatically, you do NOT type them.
   • Spaces and line returns must be added manually. For example, you might insert <<firstname>> and then <<lastname>>. You must manually insert a space between the two so the two words won't run together in the printed version.
   • Continue adding placeholders until you have added all necessary placeholders, being sure to add spaces, returns, and punctuation marks as necessary.
7. Save your document again.

To merge the two documents and create your individualized documents:

1. Choose Mail Merge from the Tools Window
2. Click Merge Data with Document (Option 3)
3. A new document containing all the merged documents will appear.
4. Save this merged document with a DIFFERENT name than either of the other two documents.
5. Print this document to produce your individualized letters.

You will also want to print your other two documents for reference. See the attached documents for examples of how each of the three documents appear.