Video: Insert custom merge fields

Use mail merge to personalize your messages. The more personal a message is, the more meaningful it is to your recipients, and the more likely it is to be read.

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Take mail merge to the next level

The more personal an email message is, the more meaningful it is to your recipients,

and the more likely it is to be read.

The recipient name in the greeting is a good start.

But we can make the e-mail more effective if we add fields

that show a recipient's car mileage and make, model and year.

Click Insert Mail Merge Field.

These are the merge fields that are available in your recipient list,

but as you can see there are no fields for mileage, make, model and year.

To get those fields, we'll have to add the data to our Excel file.

First, click Edit Recipient List.

Click the name of the file in Data Source, and then Edit.

In this dialog box you can make certain changes to the Excel file

without having to open Excel.

You can click a cell and type some new data,

or add a whole new recipient by clicking New Entry.

You can also sort the list, or find some text.

But there are some things you can't do in Word,

like add columns, which is what we need to do.

So, close the dialog boxes.

Now, in order to edit the workbook in Excel, you first need to save...

and close the document in Word.

Then, go to Excel and open the data file.

Go to the last column in the table

and type Mileage in the empty cell to the right of the last column header.

Then, add columns for Make, Model and Year. And add your data.

Finally, save and close the file.

Go back to Word and reopen the document. Click Yes to reopen the Excel list.

Go to the Mailings tab and click Insert Merge Field. And there are the new columns.

Now let's add the new fields to the email.

First, select and delete the mileage placeholder text.

Then, go to Insert Merge Field and select Mileage.

Next, select car and press Delete. In Insert Merge Field, select Year.

Add a space. Then, insert Make, add a space and insert Model. Done.

Of course, it would look nicer if our mileage number had a comma.

But in order to add formatting to numbers in a merge field,

we need to work with field codes.

To see how that's done, watch the first video in the next course, Advanced Mail Merge.

There's a link to it in the course summary at the end of this course.

For now, we'll go ahead and call this finished.

But before we send the emails, click Edit Recipient List

and let's refine the list so that email goes only to recipients with cars older than 2005.

Here are a couple of ways to do that.

Scroll to the right and click the triangle next to Year in the header.

Then, click Sort Ascending. Now you can easily see which entries are older than 2005.

Scroll back and uncheck the entries that don't apply.

This approach works but it's fairly time-consuming.

A much better way is to use the Filter.

Click Filter. Under Field, choose Year.

Under Comparison, choose Less than. And under Compare to, type 2005. And click OK.

Now the list only shows cars older than 2005.

The document is ready and the recipient list is refined.

But before we send the emails,

let's add one more thing to further personalize the document.