Part I: Creating Mail Merge on a PC using the Mail Merge Sidebar Wizard

Before creating a mail merge, it is important to already have your data source ready. Although it is not necessary, I have found that it is easiest to have your Word document set up beforehand as well. Therefore, I have already created a form letter in Microsoft Word and entered my data into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.

Here is what my spreadsheet looks like. I used the first row to name my fields and entered the appropriate data in the rows below. As you will see later, naming your rows is very important when it comes to using mail merge. Also, notice how there are two worksheets in my spreadsheet; this will also be important later.

This is my Word document. As you can see, when I created the letter, I used < > to mark where I want variable content to be placed and even entered what the content is supposed to be (i.e.: <Last Name>, <Zip Code>).

Notice how the variable content corresponds to the fields in the spreadsheet above. It is okay that the wording is not exactly the same, for example "Address1" and "Address Line 1."

Download the files to work along with this tutorial: donors_2006.xls, donors_gala_letter.doc (files work in Word 2003, 2004, and 2007)

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