Ever have trouble doing a mail merge in Microsoft Word? The mail merge wizard is the simplest tool to use to get your letters or e-mails out to your clients.

Here are the basic steps to take to do a simple mail merge (make sure you have either a contact list created in Excel or Access for this, otherwise you can create a list within Word, once asked):

1. Start Word.
2. Click on Tools, Letters and Mailings, and finally Mail Merge Wizard.
3. Select if you want to merge contacts into a letter, envelopes, labels or a directory.
4. Next, select if you want to use your current letter that you have loaded, use a template that you may have or start from another letter that you created.
5. Next, you have to choose if you want to select Outlook contacts or contacts from an Excel or Access list. If you are choosing contacts from Excel, select the file and the particular sheet that they are on. If it’s an Access file, select the query or table that your contacts are in. You can also create a brand new list of contacts if you wish.
6. Click all of the boxes with contacts that you want to include.
7. Click on “More Items” on the right hand side and click the particular fields that you want to merge on the particular parts of the letter that will change with each contact.
8. Next, you can preview all of your letters, if you wish, but I usually go to the next step, since you will be able to see all of your letters one after the other.
9. Here, click on “Edit individual letters”, then click “All” and a new window will pop up.
10. You are now ready to review and print all of your mail merged letters.

And don’t forget to save your work!

If you have any questions, suggestions or comments, please feel free to click on the "comments" link below and leave some feedback.

Until next time,

Take care – of your clutter!