Exercise No.
4
Sending joining instructions to people going on courses
Instructions:
1. Create the data file or list. Open Word >>Create 8 columns by 9 rows table. Click on Insert Table,
drag over the square to select 8 x 9.
2. In the top row we are going to put the labels for the list, then the details to be merged.
Note: please make sure that when you are typing up information to be used during a Mail Merge that
you make sure that you leave no blank lines/spaces at the top of the document. If you do when you
load the recipients then Word will expect the first data to be at the top of the page, if it isn’t then
Word will state that there is no data to merge!
3. Type the following data:
Fname Sname Dept Course Date Deposit_Paid Balance Final Payment
Max Winter IT Services Web Design 28th May 2019 1500.00 0.00 28th May 2019
Kyle Sutton Admin Photoshop Design 02nd June 2019 1200.00 300.00 3rd July 2019
Leah Wells Admin Web Design 28th May 2019 1450.00 50.00 24th June 2019
Connor Blackwell Academic CSS Essentials 9th June 2019 1500.00 0.00 9th June 2019
Keria Hambell IT Services Web Design 28th May 2019 1500.00 0.00 28th May 2019
Callum Dobson Academic CSS Essentials 02nd June 2019 1200.00 300.00 3rd July 2019
Nikki Almond Admin Photoshop Intro 28th May 2019 1450.00 50.00 24th June 2019
Danni Woodford Sciences Web Design 9th June 2019 1500.00 0.00 9th June 2019
4. Save this document in on your folder in Documents as StudentITCoursesNames. Then close the
file.Create the letter. Open a blank document in Word. Save the file as ITDeptCourses_Letter on
your folder in Documents. Type the following:
You can see that the letter doesn’t make a lot of sense – yet – we need to add the codes from the
dataset in the places where we want the information. To do this we must first join the
StudentITCoursesNames file to the ITDeptCourses_Letter. Once the letter and recipients list has
been created you will then need to start the Mail merge process.
5. Starting the mail merge. On the Mailings ribbon select Start Mail Merge.
6. Next you need to choose letters – you can see that you have the option of creating email messages,
envelopes, labels and directory mail merge.
7. Next step is to Select Recipients, this then gives you the option to either choose a list (data source)
that has already been created, type a new list or use your Outlook Contacts for email Mail Merge.
8. Select Use an Existing List. Navigate to your StudentITCoursesNames folder and select the IT
Dept Courses Letter file.
9. With your letter open next position your cursor where you want to place the information in the letter.
Click in the line <<Fname>> <<Surname>>. On the Mailings Ribbon Click the bottom half of the
Insert Merge Field Button and you will see the list of field names from the StudentITCoursesNames
file.
10. Click on the First_Name field. This places a code into the document. (Making sure that you remove
<<Fname>> and <<Surname>> otherwise they will appear on your merged document.) Type a
space – if you do not type a space then all the words will just run into each other.
11. Click on the Insert Merge Field again and select Last_Name Next move down to <<Dept>> then
add the Dept field name in the same way Move the cursor to the next position, just after the word
Dear, and then insert the First_Name field again. (You can use the fields more than once in the same
document).
12. Add the Deposit Paid, Course, Date and Final Payment field codes in the main body of the letter.
13. When the document is in this state you can preview what the merged information will look like before
you Finish & Merge.
14. Click on the Preview Results button on the Review Results section. But remember this is just a
preview and not the merged file. You can now check the document and make sure that you haven’t
left out any spaces and that the document looks OK.
15. The final button on the ribbon is the Finish & Merge. To create the merged document chose Edit
Individual Documents. This creates a new file with each record merged to a letter. It allows you to
check what you have got before you print it or email it.
16. You’re done. Save your work.
