Mail Merge

Mail Merge is a term used in the world of word processors to describe the process of combining a text document with personalised information for the purposes of mass mail outs. It could be used, for example, to send out a form letter to clients, or to send out more personalised reminder notices, Press Releases etc.

Getting Ready 

You will need two things to get started on this process :

1. a text document ( the 'letter' - usually a OpenOffice.org text file)
   
2. an address list (could be an address book from Outlook, or Mozilla Thunderbird, or other contact list such as a spreadsheet)
   

For the purposes of this document we will assume that you have both of these in some form. You might need to experiment a little to see if your preferred address list file is supported by OpenOffice.org.

I will demonstrate the process using a OpenOffice.org document as a letter :

And I will use a list of addresses in a file I created with OpenOffice.org's Mail Merge Tool earlier. It is ods file which is a type of format known as a 'spreadsheet'. If you open my address book with OpenOffice.org it looks like this :

If you have file ending in the suffix csv (a 'comma separated file') then open this in OpenOffice.org and save it again as a file with the ods extension. OpenOffice.org sometimes has issues importing comma seperated files and so its best to work with a spreadsheet file.

Starting the Wizard

First of all, have OpenOffice.org running with your text document open. OpenOffice.org has a nice little tool to help you through the Mail Merge process. Unsurprisingly its called the Mail Merge Wizard and it is found under the Tools menu :

 

You are then asked which document you will use for the Mail Merge.

 

You have the document already open so we choose the first item 'Use the current document' which is the default setting. If you wanted to use another text file other than the one open then choose 'Start from existing document' and press 'Browse' on the right - you will then be offered a file browser to locate the file.

We want to just use the first option so just have to press 'Next >>'.

Select Document Type

 

We are want to create a document that we print out so we can put it in an envelop and mail it so we choose 'letter' (the default) and press 'Next >>' 

Insert Address Block

This is where you choose the layout of the contact information that will appear at the top of the letters to be printed. You can choose one of he defaults or you can get more fancy and make your own custom layout. First of all however, you need to choose what Address List you are going to use.

The above screen is where we select the file with the addresses in it (Address List). You need to point OpenOffice.org to the right file by pressing the 'Select Address List'. If all is well you get the following window  :

The Address Book I wish to use is not listed so I choose 'Add' and I will be prompted to browse for the file :

You will now need to tell the file browser what sort of files you are searching for, you do this using the drop down menu at the bottom right of the window:

To change the file types displayed click on this drop down menu :

I have chosen 'Address Lists'; which will locate the file I made earlier using the Mail Merge tool, you may need to try one of the other options depending on the format of the file.

Beware : leaving the setting at the default 'All files' does not necessarily show all the files available so if you do not see your file where it is supposed to be then try changing this setting. Choosing 'Address lists' is probably the best first6 choice.

My file is on the desktop so I double click on the 'Desktop' icon on the left and I am presented with the list of files and folders on my desktop and I see the file I am after ('contact.ods'):

I click on the file to highlight it:

And I press 'Open' at the bottom right of the window and I should see something like this:

This means my Address List has been successfully loaded into the mail merge wizard. I can now press 'OK' and return to the main mail merge screen.

Changing the Address Layout

Now we get down to business. We can now decide on the layout of the address information that will be placed at the top of the letter. You can stick with the default layout which looks something like this:

You can see how this will look with the first entry in your address book in section 4 of this window:

If you wish to check other entries use the small arrows displayed in the bottom of the above image.

If you don't like this layout then you can change it with the 'More' button in section 2. If you press 'More' you will see this :

You can choose one of the defaults displayed by clicking on one of them. However, you can make it even more customised. Try pressing 'New' and you can make your own layout :

Here you see a list of fields and you can highlight these on the left and press the arrow button (pointing right) to add a field to the layout. If, for example, I press 'Title' on the left and then press the arrow I see this:

Now I can add as many items as I wish :

What you will notice is that the fields appear close to each other with no spaces, and all on the same line. You can change the exact positioning of each filed by clicking on that field in the layout display window on the right and using the arrow buttons to move it. Below is a (not very useful) example :

When you have finished customising the layout press the 'OK' button at the bottom and you return back to the window for choosing layouts. Instead of the defaults you will now only see the layout you created :

Press 'OK' again :

Now we can proceed to the next step. You might first wish to check your chosen layout with some of the entries in your address book to make sure they all look good. To do this use the arrows in section 4 to skip back and forward through contact details to see what each looks like.

You can keep adjusting the custom layout and tweaking it until its right, then when you are happy press 'Next>>' and we go to the next step.

Create Salutation

A salutation is a greeting like 'Hello' or 'To Whom it May Concern'. OpenOffice.org can insert a salutation at the beginning of each letter.

OpenOffice.org is supposed to also give you the option to the right gender-specific greeting. However there is a bug that prevents the gender specific greeting from working. The bug, fortunately, does not stop some of the salutation functions from being useful so its worth trying it out.

By default the salutations are deactivated so if you wish to create a salutation for every document you need to check the first box at the top of the window that says 'This document should contact a salutation'. So lets insert a salutation but keep the 'Personalised Salutation' turned off (if you don't wish to make use of this feature then just press 'Next >>' ).

So now at the top of each letter we can have the greeting displayed in the 'General Salutation' box. In the above example we see 'Hello,' :

We can type over this salutation or choose from the defaults in the drop down box. I will leave the default as it is. Now press 'Next >>' :

Adjust Layout

In this step you can adjust the position of the address block and salutation on the page. You can place the address block anywhere on the page. The salutation is always on the left, but you can move it up and down the page.

To move the box with the address information (highlighted in grey on the right of the window) you use the small arrows on the right of the filed displaying the position of the Address Block :

 

If you press these small arrows you should see the small grey block in the pane on the right move. To move the salutation use the buttons marked 'Up' and 'Down' and if you look closely you will see the salutation hop up and down on the pane on the right. Its unfortunate that it is so hard to see easily and if you have poor eyesight you don't stand a chance of seeing the changes in the small pane on the right. You would be better making your changes in the next step ('Edit Document'), however if you are persistant there is an option to zoom in by changing the 'Zoom' setting in the drop down on the right :

 

but it has to be said its a bit useless as you cannot then move the position of what you see in the window. So if what you are changing is out of view of the area that has been zoomed in on then bad luck.

OpenOffice.org would do well to fix the issues with the 'Salutation' and 'Adjust' steps in this process. The Mail Merge is still very useful, but these strange little issues make it sometimes frustrating to use. Lets press 'Next >>" and move on to the next step.

Edit Document

 

On this step you can change the layout of the letters again. You can also exclude specific recipients form being included in the mail merge. 

Excluding Recipients

You exclude a specific recipient choose the number of the recipient you wish to exclude from the 'Recipient' box:

Of course the issue is that if you have a huge list of recipients how do you know which number corresponds to which recipient? Its not easy. You could look at the original spreadsheet or consult the original address list (depending on what format it is), but its not the best way to handle this kind of function. Once again it would have been better if OpenOffice.org managed this step a little nicer. If you have a small list of recipients you could try selecting the number of the recipient exclusion box (pictured above) and then click on 'Edit Document...'

 

to check if you got the right one. Its a bit 'hacky' but it does work. If you click 'Edit Document...' then OpenOffice.org opens the document of the recipient number you have chosen like so:

This isn't really a good way to do it but it means you can check if you have the right recipient number for exclusion. If you do see that this is thr right person to exclude then press the small floating window (it can be hard to see ) :

 

and OpenOffice.org will return you to the Mail Merge Wizard. To exclude the recipient you then need to click on 'Exclude this recipient' :

Now, if you browse forward to another recipient number then the checked box sgould clear again, You can go back and forwards excluding recipients in this fashion, when you browse past a number that you ahve already excluded the little box should will become checked.

Editing the Layout 

You can also change the layout of the merged letters by pressing 'Edit this document...'. The document then opens, you can change the document and then close it by clicking on the small pop-up window:

You should be aware that any change made on the document will appear in all documents when the Mail merge is completed.

When you are finished excluding and tweaking press 'Next>>' and a window should popup :

This process is actually creating all the individual letters and merging them with the details from the address book. Then you should be pushed on to the next step:

Personalize Document

This is where you finally get to make changes to each and every document to make sure they are laid out the way you wish them to be.

If you press 'Edit Individual Document' you will be presented with one long document containing all the letters in one file. You can scroll up and down each letter and make your changes. When you are finished you click on the small popup window:

The 'Find' function on this step merely locates a word or phrase within the form letters. It does not help you find recipients. When you have finished working on each document you are ready to output the final merged documents so press 'Next >>':

Save, print or send

You have now completed the mail merge process. The last step is to do something with it. In this step, you can save the original sample letter, save the merged document or print the letters right away.

You probably want to save the starting document first and then the merged document. To save your starting document press the 'Save Starting Document' button. You will not be given any feedback if it is successful apart from the fact that the button will be greyed out and you can not press it again:

If you see this you can assume the starting document has been saved. 

The merged document can be saved as one big file or one file for each letter. When you have saved the merged document, you can print the final letters now or later; and you can still manually check and edit the letters if necessary. To save the merged file click on 'Save merged file', you will see some options appear:

If you are in a hurry to print all the documents then choose 'Save as a single document'. This will output all the merged letters to one single file which means you can open this in OpenOffice.org and print the lot quickly. Otherwise you would have to open each individual document and print them one by one. We will choose to save as one document. In this case we press 'Save' and we get a file browser window:

We type in the name of the file and press 'Save'. The job is then done! Press 'Finish' and the wizard will close. You will have before you a single merged document. This is not the document you just saved, so do with it what you will (you can quit it and forget about it if necessary).