Mail Merge

One important reason to use a PC-based information manager like WinPIM is to quickly generate professional letters, personalized for each contact. WinPIM is capable of using the power of Microsoft Word (95 or newer) to design, merge and print documents of your design to meet your specialized needs.

There are a few steps to every mail merge when you use WinPIM as a data source. These steps are:

Step 1: Select People

1.	Switch to the Contacts view.

2.	Select the contacts you want to send a letter.

Once you have names selected, you can then create a template to use for your

mail merge.

Step 2: Create a Template

3.	Click the Word button in the toolbar.

4.	Choose Create New Template.

5.	Name your Template. You don't need to type a file extension, as WinPIM will add that automatically.

6.	Click [OK]

7.	Word is started in mail merge mode with a special toolbar at the top. WinPIM provides all of the usable Contacts fields to Word so that you can insert them as needed into your document.

As you create your Template, you can use the Insert Merge Field button on

the word processor's toolbar to place a field code or merge code wherever

you want WinPIM to supply data. For the body and signature of the letter,

you should just type it as you normally would.

Keep in mind that you are responsible for all punctuation and spaces when

you are creating this template. For example, don't forget to type a space

between the first name and last name fields, or you will get something like

JohnSmith on your merged output.

When your Template is complete, you might have something that looks like

this:

January 1, 2003

<Name>

Dear <FirstName>,

8.	Save the template. (NOT Save as...)

9.	Exit Word.

10.	Return to WinPIM.

Note: You can NOT create or edit Template in Server mode. You can create your template in your local data folder, and copy the template into server's data folder to use Mail Merge.

Step 3: Merge to Template

11.	Click the Word button in the toolbar.

12.	Choose Merge to Template

13.	Choose the wanted template from the list. After choosing your Template, your word processor will immediately merge all the records you selected in WinPIM with the template to make your final, printable document.

14.	If everything is correct, you can use the Print feature in your word processor and you're finished!

Tip:

You can also DRAG contacts in WinPIM and DROP them to other programs (such as WordPad). All the contacts' information will be dropped to the program.