Performing a Mail Merge from Your Contacts
Mail merge is a technique that lets a form letter be addressed and sent to many different individuals. It can also be used to create mailing labels, envelopes, and catalogs such as a mailing list. Microsoft Office has merge tools built into several of its applications, most notably Word, and Outlook is included in this list.
When would you use Outlook to perform a mail merge? Only when the names and addresses that you want to use are in your Outlook address book. In this situation, using Outlook is often the simplest approach. Even so, some factors may mitigate against using Outlook for a merge and instead using the more advanced mail merge tools available in other Office applications. For example, Outlook cannot separate documents by ZIP code to get reduced mailing rates, and it would not be a good choice for a large merge that will create thousands of documents. You need to have Microsoft Word installed on your system to perform a mail merge.
The first step in performing a mail merge is usually to filter your contacts so that only the ones you want included are shown. You can do this by using Outlook’s search capability or by customizing the Contacts view, both of which are covered earlier in this chapter. However, you can skip this step and select the contacts to include later. Then, follow these steps:
1. | Make sure that Contacts are active. |
2. | Choose Mail Merge from the Tools menu. Outlook displays the Mail Merge dialog box, as shown in Figure 29-30. |
3. | Make entries in this dialog box as described in the list that follows these steps. |
4. | Click OK to open Word to complete the merge. |
The options in the Mail Merge dialog box are as follows:
Contacts: Select All Contacts in Current View to include all displayed contacts in the merge. Select Only Selected Contacts to select contacts to include later.
Field to Merge: Specifies whether only visible contact fields or all contact fields will be available for the merge. These options may or may not be available depending on the current Contacts view.
Document File: Specifies whether the merge will use a new or an existing Word document. If you choose the latter option, use the Browse button to locate the document to use.
Contact Data File: You can select this option to save the merge contact data in a separate Word document. Typically, this option is used to create a record of the people who were included in the mailing.
Document Type: You can merge to form letters, mailing labels, envelopes, or a catalog.
Merge To: Specify whether the merge output goes to a Word document, to the printer, or to e-mail, as follows:
New Document: Merge creates a Word document that you can edit as needed before creating the final output.
Printer: The merged document is created and sent directly to the default printer.
E-mail: The merged documents are created as e-mail messages and placed in your Outbox.
In most situations, the remainder of the merge process is carried out in Word. Please consult your Word documentation for more information.