I was trying out the mail merge feature when using Microsoft Office Word and it got me stuck at one big place. Contacts. Mail merge is an automated system where same mail can be sent to many people and still can be personalized for that particular user. You can refer recipients name or company name or even phone number etc and still not show it to any body else.

However to do that your contact book should be updated i.e. details like phone number, Name, address and other details. Though you might argue it’s not that necessary but if you are really keen to make a professional looking mail you need it.

There two key  places where the details are required :

First is when it comes to matching the contact details with mail merge fields. This can be done by using the menu item Match Fields which is under Mailings > Write and Insert Fields Section.

Secondly when you want to use Rule based mail merge where Mail merge uses the contacts field like Country or zip code etc to compare and then lets you add customized message for each of them.

Many of us including don’t have a very nicely organized contact book. Next 30 days I am going to optimize this and if not all at least pull many of the important contacts and group them so I can use them in Mail Merge. Are you going to do it too ?