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Customer Story
Mail Merge
1151 Views, 3 Comments
Title:
Mail Merge
Summary:
I want to begin using the mail merge feature and am interested in hearing from anyone who has tried the mail merge feature. I want to insert multiple fields (names, paragraphs, numbers) into various documents.I welcome any feedback.
Comments
Hi Camille,
We use the mail merge feature all the time, and it's really pretty simple once you get the hang of it. Obviously, you've got your database set up, and each field has a name, for example something like "Client Name" "Address" "City" etc...
Open up your text editor (probably Microsoft Word) and lay out your document. For instance, we'll say you're laying out a letter that will go to a couple hundred people in your database. So in the area where you would like to put the clients name and address, you'd type in the names of your fields, with tildes to denote that they should be pulled from your database. (You need to use underscores where there are spaces, otherwise it won't work)
Example:
~Client_First_Name~ ~Client_Last_Name~
~Address~
~City~, ~State~ ~Zip~
Dear Mr. ~Client_Last_Name~
etc. etc. etc....
When you upload that document as a template, with fields like that in it, you should get something out of your database that looks more like:
Mr. Bob Smith
1234 Anystreet
Anytown, TX 88017
Dear Mr. Smith,
etc. etc. etc.
Be sure you save your template as an rtf file when you're done laying it out. This will be an option when you go to "Save As" in Word, and hit the drop down menu. Upload that rtf file as a template, go to your database, view, or single record, hit mail merge, and you're off!
It's really very easy, and the best part is, you can use that document over and over again. My company has templates for our standard letterhead, fax forms, and memos. It's a cinch!
Roz
We have customers who merge entire paragraph fields into a document. For example, realtors who use TrackVia to track clients, and who merge information out of their TrackVia database into their documents. They can merge lengthy legal descriptions into documents!
Also, TrackVia has some "smart" merge fields that are big timesavers. One of these merge fields is ~me~. So, for merging into a fax, the signature line can be something like "Sincerely, ~me~." That means it'll work for anyone in your account, automatically. Merged faxes by the user Susan Smith will be auto-signed "Sincerely, Susan Smith" and those by the user John Brown will be auto-signed "Sincerely, John Brown."
We've made this feature a little easier being that we no longer require that you use an underscore for any spaces. You can now simple enter the placeholder as the field name surrounded by tildes. For Example; a field labeled "Client First Name" would use a placeholder of "~Client First Name~". This is the same when using placeholders in any mail merge, email campaign, or auto-reply template