I’m looking into applying for an administrative position that lists “experience with mail merge” as a requirement. Does “mail merge” always mean the same thing? Is it difficult to learn how to do? Can anyone briefly describe the process for me?
Hmmm, the only time I’ve used mail merge was to turn an Excel data base of names, address etc into mailing lables in MS Word. It wasn’t difficult, but it take me 15 mins or so WITH Word Help. If it’s for a data entry job I’d guess that’s what they’re talking about.
I use mail merge often, not for work, but for personal mailings. It’s not hard at all.
It’s a feature in MS Word, like Joey P said, to turn a database (Excel, Access, etc.) of addresses, whatever, into things like labels, letters, etc.
If you have Word loaded on your home PC, play around with it, it’s fairly easy, as it guides you right through the process.
IIRC, mail merge lets you put different addresses and personalized info on a standard form. This is useful for when you have to send the same letter to 100 people but you don’t want to edit it 100 times to put the addresses and greetings on it. I would imagine it’s a life-saving feature if the business you’re going into requires a lot of this type of activity.
I used mail merge with WordStar back in the 1980s, so I’m assuming that the phrase is generic (although you’d have to learn how Word does it).
In my case, I was running playtesting for a computer game company. I had a word processing file that had the names and addresses of the testers. In another file was the letter I sent to them giving them details of the latest run. That letter also had code words in place of the name and address ("Dear &NAME&
Printing a batch of letters was as easy as calling the letter file up, assigning an address file to it, and hitting the print command.
So, you’d need to know a) how Word handles this process, and b) how to update the list of addresses properly so that, for example, it doesn’t print “Dear 147 Harford Road” instead of “Dear pesch.”
Just to add, here’s a quick article on mail merge in Word 2000. The mail merge things in Word pretty much walk you through the process anymore. The difficulty will vary with your familiarity with the software used and the like, but I found it fairly easy in recent versions of Word. Good luck!
Mail merge is quite easy when done properly and a horror when it’s not.
First you prepare the form document, usually a letter. Where you need personalized information, like name and address, you insert what are called merge fields. Do not skimp on merge fields - use one for each bit of information, like title, first name, last name, company, street address, city, state, zipcode, country, along with additional fields for any other variable information needed.
After you’re comfortable with your form document, you create a data file containing individual records for all the people you need to send the document to. Each record does not have to include all available fields so if you don’t have someone’s zip code, it’s ok.
When you’re done with your data file, you simply merge it with the form document and it will create individual forms for each record, or just for the certain records you choose. You can use the same data file to create labels or envelopes too, or even use it for future communications to the same set of clients.
Word will walk you through the process, but it can be confusing for a beginner. The most important thing is to give each bit of information it’s own merge field so you are free to mix and match a person’s information as needed.