Mail Merge

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Mail Merge' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Beginning a Mail Merge
Performing a mail merge can be intimidating to some people. It needn't be; Word provides step-by-step wizards that lead you through the process. How you use these wizards is dependent on the version of Word you are using, however.

Can't Merge Alphanumeric Data Correctly
Sometimes merging data from an Excel file can be downright tricky. Dave was having a problem that illustrates this statement perfectly. This tip addresses that problem and provides a couple of ideas to help solve it.

Can't Place Merge Field In Header Of a Catalog Merge Document
Word can perform several different types of mail merge operations, and the type you choose can affect how you are able to use merge fields in the merge document. This tip explains how catalog merges are different from other types of merges, and how that affects placing merge fields in a header or footer.

Checkboxes in a Merged Document
When creating a mail-merge document, you may want to include some special characters, such as check-marked boxes, in the document. This is relatively easy to do by putting together the proper type of merge field, as discussed in this tip.

Checking Your Data File
Follow these tips to check your Data File before performing your Mail Merge.

Conditional Processing During a Mail Merge
Using the mail merge feature of Word, you can combine data and boilerplate text in powerful ways to create just the documents you want. You aren't limited to placing data in a merge document; you can also conditionally control the way in which data is merged. This tip explains how.

Conditionally Adding a Period in a Mail Merge
Do you need to process merged information "on the fly" as it is imported during a mail merge? Word doesn't provide this capability, unfortunately. If your processing needs are limited (such as adding a period to the end of a merge field), then there is a workaround you can do, as described in this tip.

Controlling Date Formats in a Mail Merge
One of the data sources that Word allows you to use for your mail merges is an Excel worksheet. You may get unexpected results, however, if you believe that the formatting used in Excel should merge smoothly into your Word document. This tip looks at how you can control the formatting for dates.

Creating a Mail Merge Data File
An easy way to perform a mail merge starts with creating a data file in a Word document. This tip shows how you can create the data in a document in a tabular format that can be easily understood by the mail merge feature.

Creating Files with Mail Merge
When you use mail merge to create a document that incorporates all your data source records, you end up with a large document that is divided into sections. You can use a macro to easily split such a document into individual files, one for each data record.

Data Source File in Word 2003
The security features introduced in Word 2003 resulted in a change in the dialog boxes you see when opening mail-merge source documents. It is easy to be confused by the dialog boxes, but this tip helps to remove some of the confusion.

Getting Rid of Blank Labels in a Filtered Merge
If you are filtering a mail merge in Excel, and you get blank labels in the printout, chances are good that something is going wrong. (Filtering should suppress those blank labels.) This tip provides some guidance on what you should look for in your merge document to get the desired results.

Getting Rid of Mail Merge Section Breaks
When you create a merged document, how Word puts the actual document together depends on the type of mail merge you perform. In most documents, the individual iterations of the source document are separated by section breaks. You can get rid of these section breaks by implementing the techniques in this tip.

Grouping Records in a Mail Merge
Need to group records in some manner when they are used in a mail merge? It can be frustrating when your records are not ordered in the way you want, but this seems to be a limitation of Word. The solution is to look to how you are organizing the data in the source program.

Mail Merge and Data Source Documents become Unattached
When you create a mail merge document, you attach it to a data source that is the basis for the information to be merged with the document. Word remembers the relationship between the two files when you later open the document. If you send the two files to someone, it is possible for the relationship to be lost. This tip explains why this can happen.

Maintaining Leading Zeroes
If you merge information into a Word document from Excel, you know that it can sometimes be challenging to get the information imported in just the way you expect. Case in point: leading zeroes in ZIP Codes. What do you do if the zeroes don't appear in the merged data?

Merging and Printing
Determining which method to use when doing a mail merge in Word.

Merging Formatted Data
Using the mail merge feature of Word, you can make data from Access databases accessible for your documents. How information is stored in the Access database can affect the way that data looks once merged into Word. This tip discusses ways you can make phone numbers appear formatted properly in Word.

Merging Graphics from Access
An Access database can store all types of data, including graphic images. Merging most data from Access into Word is relatively easy, except when it comes to graphics. This tip explains why this is the case and ways you can work around the problem.

Merging Only a Date from Access
When you are merging data from an Access database, you may get more information than you want, especially when it comes to times and dates. There are two potential solutions to this problem, both of which are detailed in this tip.

Merging with Two Data Sources
Setting up a Word mail merge to combine a data source with a merge document is easy. But what if you want to use two data sources? Well, depending on what you want to do, you may be out of luck.

Picking a Starting Label
When doing a mail merge to labels, you may want to have the label document start with a label other than the first one. Word doesn't provide a way to do this, but there are a couple of things you can try to get the results you desire.

Printing Multiple Label Copies When Merging
When merging data into a Word document to create labels, you may want a way to create multiple copies of individual labels. There are two approaches you can take, as described in this tip.

Printing Portions of Mail Merged Documents
When you merge data into a document, Word creates a large document that includes your source document over and over again. If you want to print only a portion of that large document, you may not get the results you desire—unless you know how to refer to individual parts of that document. This tip explains how to print just the portion you want.

Proper Comparisons for Dates in Merge Fields
When merging documents in Word, you can use merge fields to make comparisons on the data you are merging. Sometimes the comparisons may not give you exactly what you expect, and it can be confusing as to why this is. This tip describes how you can compare dates within a merge field to get the desired results.

Selecting Different Trays in a Mail Merge
When you create a mail-merged document, you might want some pages of the document printed on paper from one printer tray and other pages printed from paper in a different tray. This can be easily accomplished when you create your merge document to begin with.

Speeding Up Mail Merges
The Mail Merge tool in Word is a great way to create new, customized documents. If you are doing a lot of merging, you may notice that your merges slow down after a time. This tip discusses some of the possible reasons.

Using Mail Merge to Complete Documents
Mail merge can be used to put together groups of documents that rely on common information. This tip shows how mail merge could be used to make your document generation easier.

Using Merge Fields
When creating a mail merge document, you use merge fields to indicate where the information from each record of your data source should be inserted. This is easy to do, but the tools you use to place the merge fields depend upon the version of Word you are using.

Using Unique Document Serial Numbers
If you need to include serial numbers in your printed matter (labels, letters, documents, etc.), the best way is through the use of Word's mail-merge capabilities. This tip outlines how you can use this capability to get just the serial numbers you need.

Wrong Values Merged from Excel
Excel can be used as a data source for information in a Word mail merge. It is possible, however, for the values you merge to be different than what you expect. This is more than likely caused by the way in which Word merges the data. This tip covers a few things you can do to get your data just the way you want.