13.6: Write and Insert Fields Group

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One of the best ways to create customer engagement is to treat each customer like they are a unique person. Using the Write & Insert Fields icons, you can do just that. You can create custom text fields in the document that receive mail merge information. You can do this with the Address Block, Greeting Line, and Insert Merge Field Command. The Address Block & Greeting Line allows the user to apply Word’s templates, where the Insert Merge Field icon allows the user to customize the fields that are inserted into Word. After inserting all the fields, the user can select Highlight Merge Fields to display all the mail merge fields in the documents.

When conducting the mail merge, Word has many pre-populated field descriptions. The Match Fields command allows the user to match their own fields (in an excel document for example) to Word’s custom fields. Finally, the Rules icon allows the user to specify criteria for inserting special fields into a document, for example, they could create a message that says, “Happy Birthday!” if it was determined that the birthday of the recipient was the same date the letter was being printed. Finally, the Update Labels command will update the field information to all other merge fields in the document.

Preview Results & Finish

Once the Mail Merge has been created and customized fields have been created, the user can click on Preview Results which will cause Word to create customized letters determined by the number of fields in the excel document or database from which Word is using to create Mail merges. The mail merged letters will appear in alphabetical order, and the user can search by the recipient to find the individual they wish to find or navigate forward or backward their mail merge list. The user should also select Check for Errors to ensure there was no missing information in the mail merged fields. Finally, when everything appears correct, selecting Finish & Merge will create all the documents in this mail merge to be printed or emailed. The user can still edit the individual documents manually if needed.