Microsoft Office Reference Guide

Mar 26, 2004

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This update could also have gone into the Microsoft Word section of the reference guide, since that is where most mail merge happens. But I figure that many savvy Word users have mastered mail merge, while Outlook users may have considered the feature but may not have tried it.

Including the full inside address of the recipient is generally not necessary or desirable in an E-mail message. However, it certainly helps to make your recipients feel that the message received is not part of a mass mailing and it implies that the message is directly targeted.

As you may guess, one key to mail merge is setting Word as your E-mail editor. We don't need to review those steps here, since they are found in the very first task in the Outlook section of the Office Guide.

Once you've made that choice, all you need to do is to create a new E-mail message, and change the message type from HTML or plain text to RTF (rich text format).

Figure 209

The reason for this is that it makes the mail merge functions active and available. It's the only setting that allow you to access Tools > Letters and Mailings > Mail Merge, which brings up the Mail Merge Task Pane.

Figure 210

Now you can select E-mail as the mail merge type. You're in a Wizard, so click Next. Then click Next a second time to Select Recipients click Select from Outlook contacts.

Your Contact folders will be shown, so select the main one.

TIP

You can create a new Outlook subfolder with the recipients to filter your list before you begin.

Figure 211

A dialog box with your Outlook Contacts appears. Now you can click Clear All and select individual recipients, and sort the Contacts list to find the members you want by clicking the column headings.

Figure 212

With the selections made, click OK and continue in the Wizard to Write Your Letter.

If you're pretty comfortable with mail merge, you can now open the Mail Merge Toolbar and work as you did in Word.

Figure 213

Or you can continue with the Wizard and add a greeting line.

In the Wizard, you can add a formal address block, or simply continue to a more informal Greeting line. Clicking on that option brings up a choice of various formal and informal greeting types.

Figure 214

When you select one and close out, you see the field Greeting line in carats in the E-mail.

Figure 215

Now let's take a look at the Merge toolbar. Click the button to See Merged Data, and the field name is replaced by the first recipient name in the greeting format you selected.

Figure 216

Click the Next and Previous record buttons to toggle through your selected names, and see them in the greeting field.

You can now continue composing your E-mail as you normally would. To make it more targeted, you can insert other merge fields by clicking Insert Merge Field on the Mail Merge toolbar, or More items in the Mail Merge Task Pane. This brings up the merge fields, so you can mention the recipient's company in the body of the letter.

Figure 217

TIP

Make sure that if you use a field like Company in the body of the E-mail, that all the recipients you chose have entries for this field in the Contact list. Otherwise, you will have blanks and your E-mail will look terrible.

With the letter completed, you can click to Preview your letters in the Task Pane. Doing this also enables you to toggle through the list and (if necessary) go back to your recipient list to remove names (for people whose records may have empty fields).

Figure 218

Finally, you're ready to complete the E-mail merge. For this we won't use the Task Pane, so make sure that your Mail Merge Toolbar is ready, and click the last button, Merge to E-mail.

TIP

Note that entering info into the Subject line or To field of the E-mail doesn't work. Also, remember to put your cursor into the body of the message, before merging to E-mail.

Figure 219

Now you can generate your merged E-mail message for some or all of the selected contacts, and you can do so again in HTML. (This is also where you enter the Subject line.) Click OK to generate the E-mail messages with the merge completed.

Afterwards, if you don't send E-mail automatically, you can open the Outlook Outbox and see the E-mail messages to the contacts you selected. Before clicking Send, you might want to open one or two to recheck them.

Figure 221

If you need to keep a hard copy record of the E-mail that went out, you can also complete the merge again to the printer or to generate a Word document with the messages as separate pages.

Essentially, you are using the full power of Word as your E-mail editor to send out targeted E-mail. The key is to have complete contact fields and records so that there are no gaps in your final messages.

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