A reader who wishes to remain anonymous seeks a way to create form letters with Office 2011. Said reader writes: I am looking for a way to do an e-mail merge using Outlook 2011 (or even Entourage. Mail Merge is like one of those old friends you haven't called for years. Underestimated and ignored, until the day you need them badly. You just don't rea.

What is Mail-Merge? Okay, the basics first. Mail merge is the tool that allows you to create one document, like a letter or an email, and send it to many people with their personalized information inserted throughout so that it feels as though it was written just to them.

We normally think of doing that in a letter in Word. But it can be done in Outlook, sending personalized emails to many people all at once! Mail Merge Data Source You can have more than one kind of data source– where the recipients’ name, email address, etc are located.

The two easiest to work with are: • Outlook Contacts. If all the information you want to use in your mail merged email is in your contacts, that’s the quickest and easiest data source. • Excel Spreadsheet. You can also build a spreadsheet if you need to include more information than what is available in your Outlook Contacts. This is a great option if you want to export the recipients’ data from a database, too, since many databases will export in a spreadsheet format. If you will be using an Excel spreadsheet, I recommend using a header row (the first row in the spreadsheet) to label the data that will be in each column.

Here’s an example: Those column labels will come in handy when creating your mail merge file. Making the first column the email address can make the process easier, but isn’t actually necessary. Whether you use Windows or a Mac, the process of mail merging emails actually happens in Word, so that’s where we’ll start. In Word 2013 for Windows In Windows, click on the Mailings tab (this process is the same in Office 2007, 2010, and 2013), then click on Start Mail Merge and choose Email Messages. Then click on Select Recipients, where you’ll have the opportunity to type a new list, use an existing list (this option opens a dialogue box in which you can navigate to an existing file), or select from Outlook contacts (the first time you choose this option it may ask you to select a profile; most likely only one exists). The next step is to click Greeting Line on the Mailings tab.

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Here you’ll format how you’d like the greeting to appear in the email. Here’s a tip: you can overwrite the options, changing Dear to Howdy and following it with an exclamation mark rather than a comma even though those options don’t appear in the pull-down list by simply clicking on that field and typing what you’d like. Use words and formatting that reflect how you normally communicate. Now you can type your email and insert data from your file or Outlook contacts.

For instance, you might type, “Thank you, ” and then want to insert the recipients’ first names. When you get to the point where you’d like the first names to be inserted, click Insert Merge Field on the Mailings tab and select that field. Using the Excel spreadsheet above, and continuing the sentence after inserting the merge field, my sentence looks like this: Thank you, «First_Name», for joining us Sunday morning here at First Church.

“«First_Name»” is the wild card field name that will pull each recipient’s name and insert it there when the process is completed. You can continue writing the email, being as personal as you’d like by inserting the merge fields you need to accomplish your communication goal– even re-using fields to help make it a warm letter! For instance, towards the end of the email you may want to say something like: «First_Name», please feel free to email or call me with any question you may have.