Do you have a message that you want to send to multiple contacts, but you don’t want to do the old BCC trick?  Better yet… do you want to actually personalise the message for each recipient? 

Instead of “Hi all”, what about “Hi Bill”, “Hi Jane” etc?

You can, with email merge in Word 2007.

Email merge works exactly the same as a standard mail merge… except for one big difference.  Instead of printing individual letters or envelopes or labels… Word 2007 will generate individual emails, send them to your Outlook 2007 outbox, and then when you are next online in Outlook, Outlook will send each your personalised emails to each addressee.

Kicking off a email merge in Word 2007 is easy.

1. Open up Word 2007
2. Type your email in Word 2007
3. Click on the “Mailings” tab in the ribbon
4. In the “Start Mail Merge” grouping, click on the “Start Mail Merge” button.  It will show a list of mail merge options available.  You can choose Letters, E-Mail Messages, Envelopes, Labels or Directory.  In this case as we want to send an email… click on “E-Mail Messages”
   
5. Next you need to select the recipients of your email merge.  These names could come from any number or sources… maybe an Excel 2007 spreadsheet?  maybe your Outlook 2007 Contacts… or you could just type them yourself.  

   To do that, click on the “Select Recipients” box in the “Start Mail Merge” group.  Either find your data source, your outlook contacts, or create a new list.

6. If you want to edit any of the recipients in the list, now is the time to click on “Edit Recipient List” in the “Start Mail Merge” group.
7. The next step is to add the appropriate fields to personalise the greeting, the recipients name, or to add any other piece of data you might have on the contact anywhere throughout your recipient list.  

   You can find the appropriate fields in the “Write & Insert Fields” group (still on the “Mailings” tab).

   More than likely you will want to add at least a greeting line (Dear Bill… or something like that).  To do that click on the “Greeting Line” button in the “Write & Insert Fields” group.  The following dialog box appears
   

8. Once you are happy with your greeting line format, click “OK”.  Word 2007 will now drop the field into your document.
9. Now you can preview your results to ensure that everyone’s name is coming up correctly.  Click the “Preview Results” button in the “Preview Results” group… then use the forward and back arrows beside it to run through your recipient list.
10. If you are happy with the preview, not is the time to finish things off and compete the merge.  In the “Finish” group on the “Mailings tab” you will see a button called “Finish & Merge”.  Click on it, and then click “Send E-mail Messages…” 

    

11. Now Word 2007 automatically generates all the individual emails, and sends them to your Outlook 2007 outbox (or your default email client).
12. Open up Outlook or your email client, and watch all your emails be sent!

So there you have it… your 12 step guide to Email Merge in Word 2007!

’till next time,
TNP