What is Mail Merge in Word...

Factual Questions
1

…and why does it show up 28 times on my Tools drop down menu?

I kid you not. If I click on “Tools” to get the thesaurus or autocorrect or something, the menu presents me with 28 separate Mail Merge choices, which, incidentally, all look the same to me. It’s so bad, that I have to root around to find any option other than Mail Merge.

How can I make them go away???

(And while I’m at it, where is the option to turn off confirm for “delete block?” I want the selected text to disappear upon hitting delete, not ask me if I want to delete.)

I have a big thick expensive Office 2000 book, and I can’t find the answers to these two questions. Thank you for your time.

2

I dont know if this will work.

In that Tools Menu click on customize, with Standard selected click the Reset button.

Hope this helps

3

Mail merge is used when you want to mail the same letter to many people so you make a general letter and some variables will be filled in at print time (like name, address, amount owed, etc). Then you do the print job which gets the variables from another file.

As for why it shows up 28 times I have no idea. In my case it only shows up once.

4

I can’t help you get rid of it but I can tell you what Mail Merge is. It merges your mailing list with the form letter you are writing. So you put in something like:

/Recipient/
/Address Line 1/
/Address Line 2/
/City/, /State/ /ZIP/

Dear /Title/ /First Name/ /Last Name/,

We’d like to thank you for ordering our product No. 1234567, Inflatable Blowup Doll. Unfortunately this product has been recalled by the Consumer Safety Commission for possible life-threatening defects and we will be unable to supply it for you. May we recommend that you purchase our product No. 7654321, Amazing Adjustable Vibrating Device, in its place. We know you will derive many hours of pleasure, /First Name/, from this fine product.

Sincerely, blah, blah, blah

Mail Merge fills in the slots with the names and addresses of everyone on your mailing list as it prints out the letter.

5

Ok, getting better…

I did what you said, and now the main menu is the good stuff, including 1 Mail Merge option. However, the other 27 pop up in the grayed-out portion that comes up a few seconds after the menu drops down.

So, they’re hiding somewhat, but they are still there.