Writer Guide

11

Chapter
Using Mail Merge
Form letters, mailing labels, and envelopes

This PDF is designed to be read onscreen, two pages at atime. If you want to print a copy, your PDF viewer shouldhave an option for printing two pages on one sheet ofpaper, but you may need to start with page 2 to get it toprint facing pages correctly. (Print this cover page
separately.)CopyrightThis document is Copyright © 2005–2010 by its contributors as listed
in the section titled Authors. You may distribute it and/or modify it
under the terms of either the GNU General Public License, version 3 orlater, or the Creative Commons Attribution License, version 3.0 or
later.
All trademarks within this guide belong to their legitimate owners.

Authors
Agnes Belzunce
Dick Detwiler
Peter Hillier-Brook
Peter Kupfer
Alan Madden
Iain Roberts
Barbara M. Tobias
Jean Hollis Weber
Michele Zarri

Feedback
Please direct any comments or suggestions about this document to:authors@documentation.openoffice.org

Publication date and software version
Published 24 February 2010. Based on OpenOffice.org 3.2.

You can download
an editable version of this document fromhttp://oooauthors.org/english/userguide3/published/

Contents
Copyright............................................................................................... 2
What is mail merge?..............................................................................4
Creating the data source........................................................................ 4
Registering a data source......................................................................5
Creating a form letter............................................................................8
Printing mailing labels.........................................................................13
Editing a saved file of mailing labels................................................17
Printing envelopes...............................................................................18
Setting up envelopes for printing.....................................................18
Merging and printing the envelopes.................................................22
Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter..........................23
Step 1: Select starting document......................................................23
Step 2: Select document type...........................................................24
Step 3: Insert address block.............................................................25
Selecting the data source (address list).........................................25
Selecting the address block...........................................................26
Matching the fields........................................................................28
Step 4: Create salutation..................................................................29
Step 5: Adjust layout.........................................................................30
Step 6: Edit document and insert extra fields...................................31
Step 7: Personalize documents.........................................................32
Step 8: Save, print or send................................................................33

Using Mail Merge

3

What is mail merge?
OpenOffice.org (OOo) Writer provides very useful features to create
and print:• Multiple copies of a document to send to a list of different
recipients (form letters)• Mailing labels• Envelopes
All these facilities, though different in application, are based aroundthe concept of a registered “data source”, from which is derived thevariable address information necessary to their function.
This chapter describes the entire process. The steps include:
1) How to create and register a data source.
2) How to create and print form letters, mailing labels, andenvelopes.
3) Optionally, how to save the output in an editable file instead ofprinting it directly.

Creating the data source
A data source is a database containing the name and address records(and optionally other information) from which a mailing list may bederived. Although you can create and print mailing labels andenvelopes without using a data source, in most cases using one is thebest approach. This chapter assumes that you are using a data source.
OOo can access a wide variety of data sources, including spreadsheets,

text files and databases such as MySQL, Adabas, and ODBC. If theinformation to be used in the mail merge is currently in a format that
OOo cannot access directly, you need to convert it, for example byexporting it to a comma-separated values (CSV) file.
For the following example we use a spreadsheet with the following
column (field) headers: Title, First name, Last name, Address,
State/County, Country, Post Code, Sex, Points. A sample data source isshown in Figure 1.

4

Using Mail Merge

Figure 1: Spreadsheet data source

Registering a data source
For a data source to be directly accessible from within a Writer
document, it must first be registered as described below. You only needto do this once; after that, the data source is available to all documents
in OpenOffice.org.
1) From within any Openoffice.org document, or from the
OpenOffice.org Welcome screen, choose File > Wizards >Address Data Source.

Figure 2: Starting the Address Data
Source wizard
2) The choices on the first page of the wizard vary with youroperating system. Select the appropriate type of external address
book. In this example, it is Other external data source. Click
Next.
Registering a data source5

Figure 3: Select type of external address book3) On the next page of the Wizard, click the Settings button.

Figure 4: Starting the Settings part of the Wizard
4) In the Data Source Properties page, select the Database type. In
our example, it is Spreadsheet. Click Next.

Figure 5: Selecting the database type
6

Using Mail Merge

5) In the next dialog box, click Browse and navigate to the
spreadsheet that contains the address information. Select the
spreadsheet and click Open to return to this dialog box. At thistime you may wish to test that the connection has been correctly
established by clicking on the Test Connection button (notshown in illustration).

Figure 6: Selecting the spreadsheet document
6) Click Finish.
7) On the following page, click Next. Because this is a spreadsheet,
do not click Field Assignment.

Figure 7: Because this is a spreadsheet, do not click Field
Assignment.

Registering a data source78) Name the file in the Location field. The default is...\Addresses.odb; but you may replace Addresses with anothername if you wish. You may also change the name in the “Address
book name” field. In our example, the name “Points” was used for
both.

Figure 8: Name the .odb file and the address book.
9) Click Finish. The data source is now registered.

Creating a form letter
Example: Sending a letter to your customer base
A mail order company organized a campaign to assign
credit points to their customers according to thequantity of goods they buy during one year.
At the end of the year, they want to send a letter to eachcustomer to show the total of credit points collected.

8Using Mail Merge

You can create a form letter manually, which is the simplest and mostcomprehensive method and is described here, or you can use the Mail
Merge wizard as described in “Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create
a form letter” starting on page 23. If you elect to use the wizard, payclose attention to its current limitations, as identified within its
description.
1) Create a new text document: File > New > Text Document, or
open a pre-existing form letter with File > Open.
2) Display the registered data sources: View > Data sources (orpress F4).
3) Find the data source that you wish to use for the form letter, in
this case Points. Expand the Points and Tables folders, andselect Sheet1. The address data file is displayed.

Figure 9: Selecting the data source.
4) Now create or modify the form letter by typing in the text,
punctuation, line breaks, and so on that will be present in all of
the letters.
To add the mail-merge fields where needed (such as names andaddresses), click in the field heading and drag it to theappropriate point in the letter. (See Figure 10).
Note that address lines should be in individual paragraphs, notseparated by line breaks as might seem preferable. The reason
for this will be made clear in the next step.

Creating a form letter9Figure 10: Dragging fields to the body of the form letter.
5) Continue until you have composed the entire document. (SeeFigure 11 for an example.) At this time you may wish to consider
suppressing any blank lines that may appear in the resulting
letters. If not, skip ahead to Step 7.

Figure 11: The completed form letter.

10

Using Mail Merge

6) To suppress blank lines:a) Click at the end of the first paragraph to be suppressed andthen choose Insert > Fields > Other.
b) Select the Functions tab and then click on Hidden
Paragraph in the Type column.
c) Now click in the Condition box and enter the details of thecondition that defines a blank address field. It has the generalform of:![Database.Table.Database field]
where the ‘!’ (NOT) character indicates the negative case andthe square brackets indicate the condition.
For example, in our Points database the condition to test if theCompany field is empty would be:![Points.Sheet1.Company] as illustrated in Figure 12.

Figure 12: Hidden paragraph insertion
To test for multiple conditions use the operators AND and/or
OR between the conditional statements, for example:![Points.Sheet1.Title]AND![Points.Sheet1.Last Name]d) Click Insert, but do not close the dialog box until you haveamended all the lines that should be suppressed.
Creating a form letter

11

The document is now ready to be printed.
1) Choose File > Print and respond with Yes in the message box.

Figure 13: Confirmation message for merging databasefields2) In the Mail Merge dialog box, you can choose to print all records
or selected records. To select records to be printed, use
Ctrl+click to select individual records. To select a block ofrecords, select the first record in the block, scroll to the lastrecord in the block, and Shift+click on the last record.

Figure 14: The Mail Merge dialog box3) Click OK to send the letters directly to the printer.
If you prefer to save the letters to a file, perhaps to allow
proofreading or some later formatting, select File in the output
section of the Mail Merge dialog box, instead of using the default
Printer selection. This changes the dialog box to display the Savemerged document section, where Save as single document is
pre-selected. You can choose to save each letter as a single,
individual document, if preferred.
In this case, clicking OK brings up the Save as dialog box. Enter afile name for the saved letters. They will be saved consecutively inthe single document, or numbered consecutively in individual files
if saved as single documents.
12

Using Mail Merge

4) If you have not saved the original, prototype form letter document(template) previously, then you should do so now. Having a form
letter template could greatly simplify the creation of other form
letters in the future and is highly recommended.

Printing mailing labels
Before beginning this process, note the brand and type of labels you
intend to use.
To print mailing labels:
1) Choose File > New > Labels.
2) On the Options tab, ensure that the Synchronise contents
checkbox is selected.
3) On the Labels tab (Figure 15), select the Database and Table.
Select the Brand of labels to be used, and then select the Type oflabel.

Tip

If the type of label you wish to use is not on the list, use theFormat tab to define a new Brand and Type. This is beyond thescope of this document, but is relatively simple to implement, if
you know the dimensions of the label.

Figure 15: Select Database, Table, label Brand, andlabel Type.
Printing mailing labels

134) Click the dropdown arrow under Database field. Select the first
field to be used in the label (in this example, Title). Click the left
arrow button to move this field to the Label text area, as shownin Figure 16.

Figure 16: Move fields from Database field list to Labeltext area.
5) Continue adding fields and inserting desired punctuation, spaces,
and line breaks until the label is composed. Figure 17 shows thecompleted label.

Figure 17: The completed label.

14

Using Mail Merge

6) Click New Document. You now have a new, single-page
document containing a series of frames, one for each label of theselected type and filled with the data source address fields thatyou selected. Quite often some of the fields in your address data
source will be unused, leading to blank lines in your labels. If thisis not important, you can skip the next few paragraphs and go
straight to Step 7, otherwise continue as described here.
a) First ensure that the label frames are showing the fieldcontents (data source headings), rather than their underlying
field names. If this is not the case, then either press Ctrl+F9
or choose View > Field Names to toggle the view.
b) Next, ensure that you can see non-printing characters, such as
paragraph marks, line breaks and so on. If these are notalready visible, choose View > Nonprinting Charactersfrom the menu bar, or press Ctrl+F10, or click on theparagraph iconin the Standard toolbar.
You will now see that address field separation is created byline breaks , rather than paragraphs . As the suppressionof blank address fields depends on hiding paragraphs, notlines, you need to replace line breaks with paragraphs asfollows.
c) Click in the first label, at the end of the last data source
address field in the first line of the label. Press Delete toremove the new line character and then press Return (or theEnter key) to insert a paragraph marker. Repeat this action foreach line in the address.
If the line spacing in the first label is not satisfactory, you may
wish to correct this before proceeding, by modifying theparagraph style associated with the address. Unless you havechanged it, the address uses the Default style.

CautionThe objective of step c) is to replace all line breaks at the end ofdata source address fields with paragraphs. Sometimes theaddress data field may be longer than the width of the label andwill wrap to the next physical line: make sure that you are notmisled by this into deleting and replacing anything other thanline break characters.

d) Click again at the end of the first paragraph to beconditionally suppressed and then choose Insert > Fields >Other. Select the Functions tab and then click on Hidden
Paragraph in the Type column. Now click in the Conditionbox and enter the details of the condition that defines a blankPrinting mailing labels15

address field. It has the general form of:![Database.Table.Database field]
where the ‘!’ (NOT) character indicates the negative case andthe square brackets indicate the condition.
For example, in our Points database the condition to test if theCompany field is empty would be![Points.Sheet1.Company] as illustrated in Figure 12.
To test for multiple conditions, use the operators AND and/or
OR between the conditional statements, for example:![Points.Sheet1.Title]AND![Points.Sheet1.Last Name]
Click Insert, but do not close the dialog box until all lines
have been amended.
e) Repeat for each paragraph to be conditionally suppressed,
remembering to advance the cursor to the end of the line inquestion before changing the last element of the condition andInserting the result.
The last paragraph of the label address block ends with a special
field, Next record:Database.Table (Next record:Points.Sheet1 in
our example), and the Hidden paragraph field MUST be inserted
Caution before this field. This can generally be accomplished by clicking
at the end of the paragraph and then using the Left Arrow key
once to skip back over it.
A clue that you omitted this action is the observation that somerecords have been skipped and are missing from the final output.

f)Remembering that we selected
Synchronise contents earlier,
you should now be able to see asmall window containing a buttonlabelled Synchronise Labels. Click on this button and thehidden paragraph fields are propagated to all the labels inyour document.
You now have a template suitable for future use with the samedata source and type of label. If you wish to save it, use either
File > Templates > Save as, or save it as an Open Document
Text Template (.ott) into the private template directory (folder)that you have previously defined inTools > Options > OpenOffice.org > Paths > Templates.
The labels are now ready to be printed.
1) Choose File > Print. The message shown in Figure 13 appears.
Click Yes.
16

Using Mail Merge

2) In the Mail Merge dialog box (Figure 14), you can choose to print
all records or selected records. To select records to be printed,
use Ctrl+click to select individual records. To select a block ofrecords, select the first record in the block, scroll to the lastrecord in the block, and Shift+click on the last record.
3) Click OK to send the labels directly to the printer.
If you prefer to save the labels to a file, perhaps to allow somelater editing such as changing the typeface or paragraph format,
then you should select File in the output section of the Mail
Merge dialog box, rather than using the default Printer selection.
This changes the dialog box to highlight the Save merged
document section, where Save as single document is preselected.
In this case, clicking OK brings up the Save as dialog box, wherea file name can be entered for the saved labels.
If you did not save the prototype label fields document (template)in step 6f, then you are prompted to do so now by another Save as
dialog box.
In either case, whether printing or saving to file, despite there
apparently being only one page of labels, the printed or saved
output will be expanded to include all of the selected records
from the data source.

Editing a saved file of mailing labels
To edit a saved file of mailing labels, open the saved label file in thenormal way. You will be prompted as to whether you wish to update alllinks. Choose No for the following reason: The first label on the page istermed the “Master Label” and all other labels are linked to it. If you
update the links, then all labels will end up containing the same data,
which may not be what you want.
You can edit individual records in the normal way, by highlighting andchanging the font name, for example.
However, you cannot edit all labels globally (for example, to change thefont name for all records) by the technique of selecting the entire
document. To achieve this result you have to edit the paragraph styleassociated with the label records as follows:
1) Right-click any correctly spelled word in a label record. Select
Edit Paragraph Style from the pop-up menu. (Note: If you click
on a misspelled word, a different menu appears.)

Printing mailing labels

172) Then from the Paragraph Style dialog box, you can make changes
to the font name, the font size, the indents, and other attributes.

Printing envelopes
Instead of printing mailing labels, you may wish to print directly onto
envelopes. There are two basic ways to create envelopes, one where
the envelope is embedded within a letter, generally as the first page
(Insert in the Envelope dialog box), and another where the envelope isan independent document (New Doc. in the dialog box). In each casethe addressing data may be manually entered, for example by copying
and pasting from the letter with which it is associated, or it may
originate within an address data source.
This section assumes the use of an address data source and, forconvenience, a free-standing envelope.
The production of envelopes involves two steps, setup and printing, as
described in this section.

Setting up envelopes for printing
1) Choose Insert > Envelope from the menu bar.
2) In the Envelope dialog box, select the Format tab (Figure 18),
where you can select the envelope format to use. You can thenarrange the layout of the envelope to suit your requirements,
together with the character and paragraph attributes to be usedin the Sender and Addressee areas. These attributes are accessedusing the Edit buttons to the right of the dialog box, next to theword Format.

Tip

18

At this stage it is not possible to vary the dimensions of theframes that will hold the Sender and Addressee information, but
once the envelope has been created this will become possible
and you may wish to make some cosmetic adjustments.

Using Mail Merge

Figure 18: Envelope formatting dialog box3) The next step is to select the Printer tab (Figure 19), from where
you may choose the printer you intend to use, its setup—for
example, specification of the tray holding envelopes—and otherprinter-related options such as envelope orientation and shifting.
You may need to experiment with these settings to achieve thebest results with your printer.
4) You now have the choice of creating the Addressee fields bydragging and dropping from the data source headings (asdescribed in “Creating a form letter” on page 8, and in particularin Figure 10) or using the facilities of the Envelope tab.
If you prefer dragging and dropping, than click New Doc., dragyour data source headings into the Addressee area on your newenvelope and skip to step 7), otherwise continue with steps 5
and 6.

Printing envelopes

19Figure 19: Choosing printer options for an envelope
5) Select the Envelope tab (Figure 20). Verify, add, or edit the
information in the Addressee and Sender boxes (Sender is the“from” on the envelope). You can use the right-hand dropdown
lists to select the database and table from which you can accessthe Addressee information, in a similar fashion to that describedfor “Printing mailing labels”, paragraphs 3, 4 and 5 on page 13.
The similarity of the method with Figure 16 and Figure 17 will beclear.
6) When you have finished formatting, click either the New Doc. or
Insert button to finish. As might be expected, New Doc creates
only the envelope template in a new document, whereas Insert
inserts the envelope into your current document as page 1.
If you don’t want to proceed with this envelope, click Cancel orpress the Esc key. You can also click Reset to remove yourchanges and return to the original settings extant when the dialog
box opened.

20

Using Mail Merge

Figure 20: Choosing addressee and sender informationfor envelopes7) Quite often some of the fields in your address data source will beunused, leading to blank lines in your envelope Addressee area. If
this is not important, you can skip the next few paragraphs and go
straight to “Merging and printing the envelopes” on page 22,
otherwise continue as described here.
Tip

The following procedure is very similar to that used for a similar
purpose in the section on printing mailing labels. It isreproduced here for purposes of clarity.

a) First ensure that the envelope is showing the field contents(data source headings), rather than their underlying fieldnames. If this is not the case, then either press Ctrl+F9 orchoose View > Field Names to toggle the view.
b) Next, ensure that you can see non-printing characters, such as
paragraph marks, line breaks and so on. If these are notalready visible, choose View > Nonprinting Charactersfrom the menu bar, or press Ctrl+F10, or click on the large
paragraph iconin the Standard toolbar.
You will now see that address field separation is created byline breaks , rather than paragraphs . As the suppressionof blank address fields depends on hiding paragraphs, notPrinting envelopes

21

lines, you need to replace line breaks with paragraphs asfollows.
c) Click at the end of the last data source address field in thefirst line of the label. Press Delete to remove the new line andthen press Return (or the Enter key) to insert a paragraph.
Repeat this action for each line of the label.
If the line spacing in the Addressee area is not satisfactory,
you may wish to correct this before proceeding, by modifying
the paragraph style associated with the address. Unless you
have changed it, the address uses the Default style.
d) Click again at the end of the first paragraph to beconditionally suppressed and then choose Insert > Fields >Other. Select the Functions tab and then click on Hidden
Paragraph in the Type column. Now click in the Conditionbox and enter the details of the condition that defines a blankaddress field. It has the general form of:![Database.Table.Database field]
where the ‘!’ (NOT) character indicates the negative case andthe square brackets indicate the condition.
For example, in our Points database the condition to test if theCompany field is empty would be:![Points.Sheet1.Company] as illustrated in Figure 12.
To test for multiple conditions, use the operators AND and/or
OR between the conditional statements, for example:![Points.Sheet1.Title]AND![Points.Sheet1.Last Name]
Click Insert, but do not close the dialog box until all lines
have been amended.
e) Repeat for each paragraph to be conditionally suppressed,
remembering to advance the cursor to the end of the line inquestion before changing the last element of the condition andInserting the result.

Merging and printing the envelopes
To merge addresses and print the envelopes:
1) Choose File > Print. A message box (Figure 13) appears. ClickYes.
2) The Mail Merge dialog box (Figure 14) appears. As with form
letters and mailing labels, you can choose to print envelopes for
one, several or all address records in the database.

22

Using Mail Merge

3) Make your selections and then click OK to print direct to theprinter. If you wish to check the envelopes before printing them,see Step 9 of “Creating a form letter” on page 8 for instructions.

Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create aform letter
The manual method of creating a form letter described in “Creating aform letter” on page 8 provides the most control over the result and istherefore recommended. If you prefer to use the Mail Merge wizard,
the technique is described below.
Before starting you should note the following limitations, current inOOo 3:• In Step 4 creating the salutation only allows the sex-related Mr.
and Mrs. It makes no allowance for Miss or Ms, nor does it permit
sexless addressing such as Dr.
• Again in Step 4, the General salutation is not editable and thedefault values are somewhat limited.
• In Step 5 the layout is idiosyncratic, with paragraph marks allover the place so as to space the address block frame andsalutation. Creating a professional looking document requires
significant editing.
If the above limitations are not a hindrance to you, then open a new
document with File > New > Text Document and start the Mail
Merge wizard using Tools > Mail Merge Wizard. The wizard opens,
as shown in Figure 21.

Step 1: Select starting document
The wizard gives various options to select your starting document:• Use the current document.
• Create a new document.
• Use a template.
• Use an existing document.
For the purposes of this description we assume that you opened a newtext document. This will ensure that all the steps in the wizard are fully
explored, although with experience you may find it more practical touse a draft you prepared earlier, which will allow skipping some steps.
Select Use the current document and click Next.
Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter

23

Figure 21: Select starting document

Step 2: Select document typeThe wizard can produce letters or, if a Java Mail connection exists,
email messages. You can see these options in Figure 22. In thisexample, we are producing a letter. Select Letter and click Next.

Figure 22: Choose document type

24

Using Mail Merge

Step 3: Insert address block
This is the most complex step in the wizard. In this step (Figure 23) you
will do three things:
1) Tell the wizard which data source to use. The data source must be
an existing file; in this example it is the “Points” spreadsheet
created earlier.
2) Select the address block to use in the document. This means
choosing which fields appear (for example, whether the country is
included) and how they look.
3) Make sure that the fields all match correctly. This is very
important. For example, the wizard has a field called <Last
Name>. If your spreadsheet has a column called “Surname”, youneed to tell the wizard that <Last Name> and “Surname” areequivalent. This is described in “Matching the fields” on page 28.

Figure 23: Insert address block

Selecting the data source (address list)
1) If the current address list, identified beneath theSelect Different Address List button in section 1, is not the one
you wish to use, click the button to open the Select Address List
dialog box (Figure 24) for choosing a data source.
Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter252) If you have not already created the address list, you may click
Create to do so now. This step will allow you to create a CSV(Comma Separated Values) file with a new list of address records.
If you already have an address list, as we have in the “Points”
spreadsheet example, but which is not the one you wish to use,click Add and select the file in which it resides.
In each of the above cases a new data source will be created andregistered.

Figure 24: Select address list dialog box3) Select the address list and click OK to return to step 3 of the
wizard. For this example, the preceding steps are all you need to
do. The wizard can also exclude certain records; click Filter tochoose them.

Selecting the address block
1) In step 3 of the wizard (shown in Figure 23), look at section 2.
This is where you select the address block to appear on the letter,and define its appearance and the fields it contains. The main
page gives two examples. If neither of those is exactly what you
want, click More to see more choices, in the Select Address Blockdialog box (shown in Figure 25).
2) The Select Address Block dialog box offers six choices for theformat of the address block (scroll down to see the last two
choices). You can also optionally include or exclude the country(for example, only include the country if it is not England). The six
26

Using Mail Merge

formats provided are relatively common, but they might notexactly match your preference. If this is the case, select theaddress block that is closest to what you want and click Edit,
which opens the New Address Block dialog box.

Figure 25: Select address block3) In the New Address Block dialog box (Figure 26), you can add ordelete address elements using the arrow buttons on the left. To
move elements around, use the arrow buttons on the right. For
example, to add an extra space between first and last names in
Figure 26, click <Last Name> and then click the right arrow
button.

Figure 26: New address block
Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter27

Matching the fields
Finally, it is time to match the wizard’s fields with the spreadsheet
fields, so that items like <Last Name> and “Surname” match correctly.
1) Look at section 3 of step 3 of the wizard (shown in Figure 23 on
page 25). The box at the bottom displays one record at a time,using the address block format you selected. Use the right andleft arrow buttons below that address box to step through theaddresses, checking that they display correctly. Do not assume
that all the records display correctly, just because one or two do.
Check them all if you can, or at least a good proportion.
2) If the addresses do not display correctly (and they probably will
not right away), click Match Fields.

Figure 27: Match fields dialog box
The Match Fields dialog box has three columns:•
Address Elements are the terms the wizard uses for each field,
such as <First Name> and <Last Name>.
•Use the Matches to Field column to select, for each addresselement, the field from your data source that matches it.
•
The Preview column shows what will be shown for this fieldfrom the selected address block, so you can double-check thatthe match is correct.
28

Using Mail Merge

3) When you have matched all the fields, click OK to return to step 3of the wizard. Now, when you use the arrow buttons to look at all
the addresses, they should all look correct. If not, go back andchange anything you’re not happy with, before clicking Next tomove to step 4.
Note that you will not be able to continue until you have correctly
matched all the fields in your chosen address block. If you see<not available> in a field position it indicates that the field inquestion is not correctly matched.
4) Notice the option for Suppress lines with empty fields. Using
the Wizard, you do not have to create your own conditional
suppression fields.

Step 4: Create salutation
The salutation is the initial greeting, for example, Dear Mr Jones. In
step 4, select the salutation that will appear in the letter.

Figure 28: Create a salutation
You can use a different greeting for men and women. To do this, Writer
must have some way of knowing whether a person is male or female. In
our spreadsheet we had a column called Sex. In the section Address
list field indicating a female recipient, set the field name to Sex
Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter

29

and the field value to F. The male salutation is then printed for all men
and the female salutation for all women.
Note

You do not need to tell OOo who is a male, because it assumes
that all non-female records are males.

If you do not select Insert Personalized Salutation, you can use amore general salutation without referring to the recipient directly,
such as “To whom it may concern”.
As in step 3, step 4 of the wizard has a preview pane at the bottom. You
should check more than one record to ensure that other records lookthe way you expect.

Step 5: Adjust layout
In step 5, you can adjust the position of the address block andsalutation on the page. You can place the address block anywhere on
the page. The salutation is always on the left, but you can move it up
and down the page. Use the buttons shown in Figure 29 to move theelements.

Figure 29: Adjust layout

30

Using Mail Merge

Step 6: Edit document and insert extra fields
In step 6 you have another opportunity to exclude particular recipientsfrom the mail merge, as shown in Figure 30.

Figure 30: Edit document
You can also edit the body of the document. If you started with a blankdocument, you can write the whole letter in this step. Click Edit
Document to shrink the wizard to a small window (Figure 31) so you
can easily edit the letter.

Figure 31: Minimized mail merge wizard
You need to perform another important task in this step. The wizard
only inserts information from the name and address fields, but you may
wish to add additional data. In our example, we want to tell each
person how many points they had accumulated during the year; that
information is in the spreadsheet.
To do this:1) Click Edit Document in step 6 of the wizard.
2) Choose Insert > Fields > Other. The Fields dialog box opens.

Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter31

Figure 32: Insert mail merge fields dialog box3) Click the Database tab.
4) On the left hand side, select Mail merge fields.
5) Under Database selection find your data source (in thisexample, it is a spreadsheet). Expand it to see the fields.
6) Click the field you want to insert, then click Insert to insert thefield.
You can insert any number of fields any number of times into yourmail merge document.
7) Click Close when you are done.
Note

The Database selection lists the data source you selected instep 3. All the information you need for the letter must be
contained in that data source.

Step 7: Personalize documents
In step 7, OOo creates all your letters, one per recipient.
Clicking the Edit individual Document button here is similar to step
6. The difference is that you now edit a long file containing all of theletters, so you can make changes to a particular letter to one person.
In this step of the Mail Merge wizard (Figure 33), click Find to open a

32

Using Mail Mergedialog box that allows searches within the document, perhaps for anindividual addressee.

Figure 33: Personalize document
As with step 6, when editing the document, the wizard shrinks to asmall window (Figure 31). Click on this window to expand the wizard toits full size.

Step 8: Save, print or send
You have now completed the mail merge process. The last step is to dosomething with it. In step 8, you can save the original sample letter,save the merged document, print the letters right away or, if you
created email messages, send them.
You probably want to save the starting (prototype) document and themerged document. To do this, select Save starting document toreveal the Save starting document section containing theSave starting document button. This button will be active only if the
document has not already been saved. Clicking on this button brings
up the standard Save as dialog box. Once you have named and saved
the document you return to the Step 8 dialog box as shown in Figure
35.

Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter

33

Figure 34: Step 8: Save, print or send
The merged document can now be saved by selection of Save merged
document. This will reveal the Save merged document settings
section, from which you can select to save either as one large filecontaining all the individual, generated letters or as a separate file foreach letter.
When you have saved the merged document, you can print the final
letters now or later; and you can still manually check and edit theletters if necessary. If you elect to print at this stage, the dialog box
shown in Figure 36 appears; it should be self-explanatory.

Figure 35: Saving a merged document

34

Using Mail Merge

Figure 36: Printing the merged document

Using the Mail Merge Wizard to create a form letter35