Word 2016 Intermediate/Advanced

Word 2016

Lesson 8 – Using Mail Merge

Steps

Practice Data

2. Under Step 1 of 6 , select the Next: Starting document link. Step 2 of 6 appears in the Mail Merge task pane. 3. Under Select starting document , select the desired main document. The Use the current document option is selected.

Click Next: Starting document

Click Use the current document , if necessary

C REATING A R ECIPIENT L IST  D ISCUSSION

The next mail merge step is to create or identify the data source. A data source is a file that contains the information to merge into the document, typically the recipient of a letter or an e- mail message. The data source must contain the variable information inserted into the merge fields in the main document. A data source can be a Word document, a spreadsheet (such as an Excel workbook), a database (such as an Access database), or an Outlook contact list.

Before you create a data source, you must define the information you want to store in each record. Each individual piece of information in a record is called a field . For example, first name, last name, street, and city are all separate fields.

Think of the data source as an index card file with each index card containing one record (all information about one person, such as name, address, telephone number, and so on). If you create a data source in Word, it is saved as a Microsoft Office Address List (with the extension .mdb which is a file format used in earlier versions of Access) in the My Data Sources folder.

Since the essential requirement for a mail merge is the list of recipients, Word refers to the data source as a recipient list.

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