Introduction.

Form Letters.

Form Letters are prepared from a standard template merged with addressee related information filled in on each letter.  Appointment letters, call letters for interviews or Employment Contracts etc. are some of the examples and easier to prepare them in Ms-Word Mail-Merge mode, rather than composing them individualy for each addressee.

These type of Letters will have some common body text, applicable to all the recipients and will have specific areas where personalized information can be inserted, like Name and Address, interview dates or nearest location where the candidates can attend the interview and so on.

If the interview calls should go to hundreds of prospective candidates then we need to prepare only one letter with standard body text applicable to all receipients.  Other personalized information can be automatically inserted from the attached data Table, at appropriate places on each letter, at printing time.  This process is known as Mail-Merging.

We have already made an attempt to mimic this process in Microsoft Access itself with the help of VBA, some time back, and the links of those Posts are given below for your reference:

1. Ms-Access and Mail-Merge
2. Ms-Access and Mail-Merge-2
3. Ms-Access and Mail-Merge-3

The Names, Addresses and other related information of each individual will be kept in an external Table.  The external Table can be prepared in any of the following Applications:

1. MS-Word Document with Table Grid.
2. MS-Excel Data Table.
3. MS-Access Table.

The Table can be linked to the Form Letter so that Ms-Word can pick the required information from the Table and insert them where Table Field-Codes are placed on the body of the letter.

Sample MS-Word Table.

We have prepared a small Table in Word Document, within the Table Grid, as an example  in case if you prefer to prepare one in Word.  Here is an image of the data table with only 3 entries, similar to the one we have in Northwind.accdb Employees Table.

MS-Access Employees2 Table.

But, we will be using a modified Employees Ms-Access Table prepared with few new fields, for our Mail Merge Demo Run, from the original Employees Table of Northwind.accdb sample database.  The  image of the Employees2 Access Table is given below:

Create the Employees2 Table from the Employees Table of Northwind.accdb, with the selected fields in your Database.  Create three more fields and fill it up with sample data as shown in the above image.

Sample Letter Specimen.

A Specimen image of the Letter, without the individual Employee details is given below:

Create a Letter in MS-Word similar to the specimen given above and save it with the name: Employees.

Sample Merge-Printed Letter.

When we merge print the personal information on the Document, from Access Table, it will look like the sample image given below:

Inserting the Merge Fields on Document.

Let us prepare a Mail-Merge Document in Word, with the above Employees2 Table as Source Data,  matching the above merged letter model. 

We assume that the above Employees of our Organization is awarded with an Annual increment, in appreciation of their commendable contribution to the Company’s overall growth and encourage them to do better by taking up future challenges of the company.

1. Open the Employees Word Document, as per specimen given above, created and saved earlier.  If you have not yet created one so far, then let us do it now.
2. Click on Start Mail-Merge from Mailings Menu and select Letter.
3. Click on Select Recepients and select Use Existing List.
4. Browse and find the Database where you have the above Employees2 Table is and Click Open.
5. The list of Tables are displayed, select Employees2 Table and Click OK to select it.  Now, the Employees2 Table is attached to the Document.
6. Next, if you click on the Edit Recepient List it will display all the records in the Employees2 Table with check-marks indicating that all the employee records are selected for Merge-Printing the Letters.  If any employee is to be excempted from the letter then remove the check-mark on that item.

   First we will insert the Address Block and Greeting Line information on the Letter, from the Merge-Fields selected from the attached Table.  Even though we can insert these to sections in two simple steps, we will do it the hard way to make things to our liking and less complicated, if the automatic method is not properly understood, for the first time user.  You may try them later by selecting Address Block and Greeting Line buttons and their optional settings to modify the output on the document.

7. Click some where below the Reference information (Ref:ABC/HRD/2020/1234-) and above the word Dear on the Letter.
8. Click on Insert Merge Field option in Mailings Menu and click on First Name Field.  Open the same list again and select Last Name.
9. Click in the middle of both field-codes and tap the space bar to insert a space between First-Name and Last-Name segments of the Employee Name and position the insertion point on the next line.
10. Select Address from the Merge-Field list for the second line.
11. Select City for the third address-line.
12. Insert State/Province and Country/Region on the next line, with a space in between.
13. Position the Insertion point after the word Dear with a space, insert First Name and Last Name  fields with a space in between.

    After inserting the merge fields it will look like one of the images given below, based on the Field-Code display option setting ALT+F9.

    OR

    The second image is the expanded form of Merge Field Codes. You can toggle between these two states by pressing ALT+F9 Keys.  see that the Preview Result button is in de-selected state.  If the Preview Result button is on then the actual data will be displayed.

14. Position the insertion point on the Designation line and insert the Job Title Merge-field.
15. On next three lines insert Pay, Grade and Wef (stands for with-effect-from) Fields.

    When completed it will look like the following image:

    We need two more pieces of data for Reference Sequence Number and Date of the Letter.

16. Position the insertion point at the end of the existing reference number, immediately after the dash character (Ref: ABC/HRD/2020/1234-).
17. Select Page Number from Insert Menu and select Current Position from the displayed list.
18. Position the insertion point after the word Date:.
19. Click on Date & Time option, under Insert Menu and select one of the Date-format options displayed.
20. Press Ctrl+S Keys to save the Word Document with the changes.

Merge-Printing the Letter.

Now, we are ready to Merge-Print the Document for each selected employee on the Employees2 Table.

1. Click on Preview Result button, with the Zoom Glass image, under Mailings Menu. 
2. If it is still on Field-Code display, then Press ALT+F9 Keys to Fill-in the first Employees data, wherever we have inserted the Merge-Fields on the Document.
3. Now, you are viewing the sample Document you will get when Merge-Print the Document on the Printer,  one Document for each employee.
4. Now, Click on Finish & Merge button and select Edit Individual Document. . .  and select All.

All the Documents are merged with Employees information and you are allowed to edit the Pages, if needed.  Can insert spaces between lines or inserted information can be formatted in Bold letters.  If Letter head is not appearing properly then insert a line and so on.

Once you are finished editing, select Print from Office Button, then Preview or Print the Document on Printer.

If you have selected Send EMail Message at Step-4 above then you can send the Document as Email Message.

1. MS-Access and E-Mail
2. Invoke Word-Mail Merge from Access2007
3. Automated Email Alerts