A Mail Merge is the process of merging a list of contact names and addresses with a template in order to create one or more letters. For example, you may perform a mail merge with a list of all your customers in order to create a letter notifying them of your latest products or services.
OfficeTalk lets you perform mail merges with a specific document template and with a contact group representing your list of contact or company names and addresses. Once you have created a mail merge, OfficeTalk will record it as a history trail against each company and contact involved.
You can perform a mail merge in the following way:
Prior to performing a mail merge there must exist at least one document template. For more information on creating document templates, see Designing Document Templates
Select Mail Merge from the Edit/New menu. The Mail Merge wizard is displayed.
Enter a subject describing the purpose of the mail merge, for example, 'Product Update Letter'. Press Next.
The next page lets you select a contact group with which to perform the mail merge. You may also choose whether or not to mail either the companies belonging to the contact group or the contacts belonging to the contact group, or both. Pressing Next will display the Record page.
The Record page lets you choose whether to record a history record for each company or contact involved in the mail merge or whether to record a single record for the entire mail merge. Select the appropriate radio button and press Next.
The Template page lets you choose which document template will be used to generate the mail merge. Select the appropriate template and press Finish. OfficeTalk will create the mail merge document and will launch your default word processor to show the mail merge document. OfficeTalk will also add history records according to the options chosen in the Record page. The mail merge history will be available from the history tabs in Company or Contact View or from within History view.