Creating a Mail Merge with Microsoft Word 2003

Creating a mail merge with Microsoft Word can be an efficient and fast way to save time when a mass mailing is in the works. Can you imagine manually typing five hundred different addresses on letterhead or labels when just a few simple clicks will do? That's the beauty of a mail merge. To get started, it is a good idea to first create a spreadsheet in a program like Microsoft Excel with fields consisting of First Name, Last Name, Address, City, State, Zip, etc... so the records can be easily imported to the mail merge. Once you have the spreadsheet completed you are ready to begin the merge process.

Open up Microsoft Word or create a new Word document if the program is already open. Click Tools on the menu at the top of the screen and choose Letters and Mailings.

From the fly out menu select Mail Merge. The Mail Merge menu will appear on the right hand side of your screen allowing you to choose which type of merge will be performed. For our example, let's create some labels. Click the Label radio button. We have now completed step one of six as indicated at the bottom of the screen. Click Next: Starting Document to proceed to the next step in the mail merge process.