How to write Form Letters

John White, November 2008

These are letters which all have the same text but which are personalised to each recipient. The result is that it looks as though you have sent an individual letter to each person, but without the labour of actually doing so. It is much more acceptable than ‘Dear Sir/Madam’

Firstly you need to prepare or select the database or list of the names and addresses which contains all the information you need. The key fields, whether in Access, Excel or any other list are:

Title
Initials
First Name(s)
Surname
Street address
Town
County
Postcode and, if relevant Country.

It is not enough to have the name in a single field, as you will end up with ‘Dear Mr & Mrs J Smith’, or even ‘Dear J Smith’, which rather defeats the object.

Creating the letter

I find it easiest to write the text of the letter first, though it can be done later. The text is everything you want to say, excluding the address of the recipient and the salutation – do include ‘Dear’ if that is your intention.

Then select Mailings from the menu bar; then Start Mail Merge/Step by Step Merge Wizard.

The Wizard opens with ‘Letters’ checked at the top and ‘Next: starting document’ at the bottom. Select that and leave ‘Use the current document’ checked in the next screen. If you had not written your letter beforehand, this is the opportunity to do so. It is also the first opportunity to change the content of the original.

Who is to receive the letters

Select ‘Next: Select Recipients’/Use an existing list/Browse.

At this point you must navigate to the database or list containing the addresses and select the table or query which contains the ones you want. For example, if the letters are to customers who bought something from you and you want to exclude those who did not, you would produce a query with the relevant information and use that instead of the parent table as your source.

The list which you are going to use has check boxes, enabling you to select all the people in the list or not, as you wish.

Then select ‘Write your letter’ - this is yet another opportunity to write/edit the letter.

Insert the various merge fields

Make sure that your cursor is in the place where you want to insert the address in your letter. Select ‘More items’ from the alternatives listed – this brings up a list of the fields available in your database. Then click Title in the field list and close the list. The field has been inserted. Type a space and return to the field list by clicking More items in the right hand pane. Insert Initials and close the list. After inserting Surname in the same way, you will need to press Enter to move to the next line of the address. Complete the address fields as necessary.

As an alternative, you can insert all the merge fields in a single line with no spaces, then close the dialogue box and insert spaces, line breaks etc as necessary. (Don’t bother with the Address Block alternative – it produces addresses in the American order and is not suitable for UK).

After the word Dear in your letter, insert the field either for Title and Surname or First Names, depending on whether the letter is formal or personal. If a business letter contains, say, an order number and an amount payable, there will have been fields to contain these pieces of information in the database. You can include them in the body of the letter and Word will make the necessary space for them.

‘Preview your letters’ comes next. This produces the first letter only, by way of an example. You can edit the content e.g. if you forgot to put in the date – any alterations you do there affect all the letters.

Choosing ‘Edit individual letters’ brings up all of the letters, and is followed by Complete the merge. The letters are now ready for printing.

You can produce mailing labels from the same source and marry them up with the letters.