How to Mail Merge Word 2007 like a Pro

Did you know that Microsoft Word 2007's mail merge features aren't just for creating letters and labels? You can use Word merge to create templates, certificates, and other types of data merges. All you need is a reason to create similar documents customized for different purposes and basic Word Merge 2007 skills.

Mail Merge Word 2007 Uses

The term mail merge comes from its roots as a means of creating customized mass mailings. While mass Word mail merge mailings remain popular, you can also create other merged Word documents including:

• Envelopes and mailing labels

• Certificates

• Invoices

• Templates

While Word Merge 2007 uses mail terminology such as "recipients," you can use any type of data you please. For example, if you're the coach of a little league baseball team, you could create a database of each player's statistics and create individual sports cards for each player at the end of the season by creating a Word document and including merge fields detailing the player's name, batting average, runs batted in, and other statistics. If you keep track of your clients' billable hours and expenses in Excel, you could create mail merge Word 2007 documents detailing each project's expenses.

Advanced Mail Merge Word 2007 Techniques

These more advanced mail merge 2007 techniques require an external data source such as an Excel spreadsheet and the creation of a normal Word document rather than using the Word 2007 Mail Merge wizard. For example, let's say you have an Excel spreadsheet listing students from several different courses and you'd like to make certificates for each one with the name of the student and the title of the course in the certificate. You could download a Microsoft Word template for an award certificate, link it to the Excel spreadsheet using the Select Recipients command, and then place the merge fields into the appropriate area of the awards certificate. Once you've added the appropriate merge fields, you can finish the Word mail merge and print the certificates. If you have hundreds of students, performing a mail merge is much faster than copying and pasting each student's name into the document.

Saving Your Mail Merge Word Document

It's likely that you'll want to create additional merged documents based on the same settings in the future. Make sure to save your mail merge Word 2007 document and database. As you add new records to your Excel spreadsheet, you can later open the Word mail merge document and create new merged Word documents with the new data. Simply open the document, confirm the data source and then go to Mailings > Finish and Merge. Choose Print Documents and select the range of records.