Special Edition Using® Microsoft® Office Word 2003

An Overview of Word's Mail Merge

Mail merge is the process of creating custom mailings (or other documents) that combine unique information with standard text to create a set of unique documents—typically, one for every recipient. Word's mail-merge feature gives you the power to customize your message for just a few people—or for thousands at the same time.

To successfully run a mail merge, you need to understand two fundamental concepts. The first concept is this: You need a main document and a data source.

The main document contains the text that you want to remain constant. The main document also contains instructions about which changeable text Word should import and at which point it should import it. These instructions are called merge ...