2011 Procedure 34 Mail Merge Letter

It may often be necessary to communicate more formally with your customers. A personalized form letter can be the quick and easy answer to your needs. Creating such a letter in Microsoft Word can be very simple. Microsoft provides tools for passing information between applications, such as from Microsoft
Access database to Microsoft Word.

The procedures to create a letter using the Mail Merge feature:

1) Log into Fore! Reservations.

2) Open Microsoft Word by selecting the View | Marketing | Mail Merge menu item.

3) Microsoft Word will load with the label template.

4) Select the Edit | Select All menu item and then press the Delete key to clear the label template.

5) Select the Tools | Mail Merge to bring up the Mail Merge Helper.

6) On Step 1, click on the Create button. This will give you a pull-down menu where you select Form Letter.

7) An option will come up to Change Document Type or New Main Document. To retain the automatic connection to the database that Fore! Reservations creates, select Change Document Type.

8) Click the Edit button and select Form Letter Document 1.

9) Type the letter as you would like it to appear, using the Insert Merge Field for database fields, such as Last Name, First Name and Address etc.

10) If the Field Names are not appearing in your document, toggle the ABC button to change the view of the form letter.

11) When completed with the letter, select Tools | Mail Merge.

12) At the Mail Merge Helper under Step 3, click on Query Options.

13) If the Microsoft Query dialog box is displayed, select No.

14) In the Query Window, there will be three preset options eliminating customers without addresses and postal codes.

15) If you would like to further segregate your customers, you can add more constraints to the query by selecting fields to query in rows four through six.

16) If you want the letters to be sorted, click on the Sort tab and select the method to sort the letters.

17) When the query and sort are complete, click OK.

18) In addition to the letter, you may need to create envelopes for each. In the letter, highlight the first name, last name, address, city, state and postal code fields.

19) Select the Tools | Envelopes and Labels in Word 2000 or older or Tools | Letters and Mailings | Envelopes and Labels in Word XP.

20) The demographic fields highlighted appear in the Envelopes and Labels Window.

21) If you are using Letterhead Envelopes, check the Omit checkbox to leave out the return address. Otherwise click and type in the return name and address in the return address field.

22) Click on the Add to Document button.

23) It returns you to the Form Letter and now breaks the page to add the envelopes to the document.

24) Select the Tools | Mail Merge menu item.

25) Under Step 3 on the Mail Merge Helper, select Merge.

26) Confirm that it says to merge to a new document, then click on Merge.

27) Word sorts through the database and creates both letters and envelopes for the appropriate customer records.

28) The letters can be printed or the file can be saved to print them later.