Help please - spreadsheets and mail merge

judy2357

Help please! Have been invited to interview for a job where there is a test on mail merge and a spreadsheet exercise. Am very familiar with MS Word but have never used mail merge and wouldnt know where to start and as for Spreadsheets, did the basics of this about 12 years ago and havent touch them since. Please make any advice as simple as poss. Thank you.

Sput2001

The Walk Through on the Microsoft site is pretty good.

PhilCo_2

It's not something I've done before but think you just need to create a spreadsheet with the details you want to merge with headings in row 1 i.e.

Name Address
Phil Southport

Save the file. In Word with the file you want to add the merge fields to click on Tools - Mail Merge. In Step 1 click Create and pick the one you want. Choose Active doc if you already have the file open. In Step 2 click Get Data and choose Open Data Source. Find your spreadsheet (remember to change file type to Excel to show xls files). If you have a range named that covers the data you want to use select that else select Entire Spreadsheet. Follow the instructions for the type of file you want to create then Edit Main Document. You should now see a new toolbar with Insert Merge Field as the first button. If you click it it will show you the headings from your spreadsheet which you can insert on the Word Doc. Click the Mail Merge Helper button on the toolbar and Merge and then Merge Again. You should now get a page per record in your spreadsheet.

judy2357

Have managed a simple example of this but it only seems to work if I split the address in the spreadsheet eg address, town, county and Post Code. I hope this will be sufficient as otherwise I wont stand a chance, unless all the other interviewees are worse. I will keep practising though as Ive got about 14 days yet. Many thanks

Sput2001

judy2357 wrote: »

Have managed a simple example of this but it only seems to work if I split the address in the spreadsheet eg address, town, county and Post Code. I hope this will be sufficient as otherwise I wont stand a chance, unless all the other interviewees are worse. I will keep practising though as Ive got about 14 days yet. Many thanks

Yup, you'll need separate columns for each element of the name, address and so on. For example:

Title (e.g. Mr, Mrs etc.)
First Name
Last Name
Address Line 1
Address Line 2
Town/City
County
Postcode
Telephone
email address

and so on...