Overview of Mail Merge

Have you ever opened up a piece of "junk mail" and see that your name is typed in the salutation and perhaps mentioned in the body of the letter? This kind of document is called a form letter. Your name has been placed into a specific location ( referred to as a form field) of the form letter through a process called merging. To create the mail you received, the company merged two files together:

the data source file
the main document (form letter)

Word 2000 provides a utility called the Mail Merge Helper under the Tools menu that will take you through this process. The Mail Merge Helper can also walk you through printing mailing labels.

In the first part of the tutorial you will learn how to merge a list of names with an office memo. In order to do this you must first create the form letter.

Next Topic: Creating the Main Document: Form Letter