Creating Microsoft Office Form Letters

Firstly, get a copy of a letter that you would like to turn into a form.

Now go through your letter and highlight all of your independent variables, these will be the items that will change from letter to letter, such as names, addresses, telephone numbers etc. Once you have all of these items highlighted, write them down on a piece of paper, giving each field a different title, that you will know what information is being asked for when prompted.

Now create a word document and call it Filemerge.doc (I recommend replacing "file" with whatever you want to call your letter, I will use "file" for the sake of this article.

Next, count how many independent variables you have, and in your Filemerge.doc file, insert a table, with the same number of columns, as you have variables, and 2 rows.

You will now want to go across the top row, and fill in the names of your variables in each of the columns, this will most likely look unaligned and ill-formatted, however, this does not matter, as this file will just act as a database for your form letter.

Once you have completed filling the top row with your variables, save the file somewhere you can locate it, and open another new file, name it the same thing, but replace the word merge, with form like this FileForm.Doc.

Copy and paste your letter into this new document and right click on your tool bar at the top, and check the "mail merge" tool bar, this will add another tool bar to the top of your document.

Find the button on this new tool bar labeled "Open Data Source" this will prompt you to find a file, and you guessed it, you are going to open your filemerge.doc file.

Now you can go through your letter inserting your variables, you will do this by clicking "Insert Merge Fields" on your mail merge tool bar, you can only insert one at a time, so move your cursor to where you want it, and click it, then a window will open with all of your merge fields, select then one you want, and click insert, repeat this for all of your merge fields.

Once this is accomplished, save your fileform.doc, when you do this it will ask you if you would also like to save filemerge.doc, save both. Once saved, you can now click "Mail merge recipients" on your mail merge tool bar, this will open a window that prompts you for data to enter based on the independent variables you had named earlier, fill these in and click ok, make sure the check box is checked next to your entry and click ok.

Now you can use the merge buttons to the far right of the tool bar, "Merge to new document" "Merge to printer" and "merge to email" to create quick and easy letters with different information, enjoy!