hands
on 2002
Mail
Merging with AppleWorks 6 for OSX
by Sean Roulet
If you own a new iMac or iBook, did you know that Apple has provided you
with a free Office suite? If you write letters, prepare business plans,
develop spreadsheets, organise databases or create presentations then
AppleWorks 6 is all you need. It will even open and save Word and Excel
files!
As a Small Office Home Office (SOHO) enterprise (or of you have lots of
friends) then one of your tasks will be to inform clients of your latest
promotion. If you are going to mail hard copies then you will need to
type the information in the AppleWorks Word Processor (called the static
information) and then utilise Mail Merge to input your clients’ addresses
(the dynamic information) from a database.
To conduct a mail merge it is advisable that first you have your database
ready. In the database you will place information such as the name, and
address of the recipients.
1. First create your database. File->New->Database
2. Then add the fields that you want to include (name, address etc.)
3. Save the database.
4. Next create your merge document (i.e. the letter that you will send.)
5. Once completed, choose Mail Merge from the File menu
6. Find the database that you created
7. Place your cursor where you want the data field to appear and select
insert
8. Click Merge and then choose to send the merged document straight to
a printer, save as a new document or save each final document on a disk.
The first option obviously prints the final file and should be used when
you only want to print the merged document and nothing else.
The second option saves each visible record in one document separated
by a section break and allows you to modify the individual letters so
that you can do some personalization, re-save and print later. If this
option is not available, it means that the resulting file is too large
for AppleWorks to save to one file.
The third option saves a copy of the merged document for each visible
database record. It is recommended you save one file for each record.
Obviously if you have 3000 records, this may prove impractical as it would
create 3000 files. Nevertheless, this is recommended for a small number.
Image of Mail Merge in operation.
Further tutorials for maximising your AppleWorks 6 is at www.apple.com/appleworks/
Sean Roulet is from the Mac Users Group of Singapore. Its website is at www.macuser.org.sg