Tip of the Week: Email merge

Application: Word & Outlook 2010

Microsoft Word offers a mail merge wizard with step by step instructions to send emails by mail merge. With e-mail merge, each e-mail message is a separate mailing where each recipient is the sole recipient of each message. Each message can be personalized to address each recipient by name, yet the content of each message is unique. The unique information in each message comes from entries in a data file such as an Excel spreadsheet. This is unlike broadcasting an e-mail message to group of recipients or hiding recipients on the blind carbon copy (bcc) line of the message in each recipient only sees the email addressed to them.

Email merge process

1. Using the mail merge wizard, set up the email message in Word.
2. Connect the email message document to the data list.
3. Determine which recipients in the list will receive the email.
4. Add placeholders or mail merge fields to the email message document.
5. Preview and complete the merge.

For detailed instructions for each of these steps, see the Microsoft Office article Use mail merge to send personalized messages to your e-mail address list.