Barefoot
Technologist
Train the Trainers Program




Mini-Lesson: Mail Merge with Microsoft Word/Excel/Access

Mini-lesson goal: To be able to use Access or Excel plus Word to do Mail Merge

Examples: Letters to clients

Best format for this lesson: one on one or small group

Materials needed: at least one computer for each pair of participants, and one copy of this mini-lesson for each participant. An LCD projector for a larger group will be important.

Trainer’s notes are in BOLD ITALIC, and you’ll notice this 8 icon before any notes to trainers in the text.


There are three different ways you can do mail merge: from a Word table, an Excel spreadsheet and an Access database. We’ll do all three here.

8 This mini-lesson can be tailored specifically to your organization’s situation. If you regularly use Excel for Mail Merge – trim this document down to only include that example, for instance.

First, you must have a letter prepared. Type in a sample letter like the following:


Save it. Then, create a table (8 see Mini-lesson: Microsoft Word Tables), like the following:



and save it. Then, choose “Mail Merge…” from the “Tools” Menu:



Click on the “Get Data” under 2: Data Source. Choose the file that has the table that you just made.  

8 This step can be confusing to people new to the mail merge concept. It might be good to go slowly here.

When you choose that, Word will complain that there are no merge fields. Enter them, by clicking where you want them to go, and then using the “Insert Merge Field” that is now on the toolbar:




You can then choose between different fields:

Choose the appropriate field, for the appropriate place in the letter. Your letter should now look like:



Next step, to merge. Choose “Mail Merge” again, and then click the “Merge” Button:



At the top left, you have the option to choose to merge to a new document, printer, or e-mail. You can merge all records, or only the records in a particular range. You can also choose to not print blank lines. Notice the line “No query options have been set.”. Click on “Query Options:”



You can choose to select particular records, like all children who have the teacher “John Smith”:



This works in a similar way to Access queries. You can also sort the data (this is also in query options.)

If you merge to a file – you can then see all of the letters that will be generated:



Merging documents from Excel and Access are not too difficult. Just choose different data sources. Start another letter. Then, make a small excel spreadsheet, with the same sort of information as you put in your word table. Make sure to include column names:


Then, choose this spreadsheet as the data source:

Make sure to choose “entire spreadsheet” and then you are all set. You can then add these the fields in the excel spreadsheet, as you did with the table.
       

Try yourself to create a small Access database, and use it as a data source. It’s fairly straightforward. Notice, when you choose an Access database as a data source, that you can use either tables or queries as sources for your mail merge.