Mail Merge is used when you want to create set of documents or a form letter that is sent to many customers. I have explain in prevous article How to Use Mail Merge in Word to send form letters in multiple customers. Very easy and very helpfull when you have hundred of customers to send a form letter. Today i will explain another feature of mail merge that it's also very helpfull when you have to do with numbers in form letters.
So let's create a scenario to implement the number format with mail merge.
Scenario
We use Template for Invoices from Word. We must generate invoices for 200 customers and send them with an email.
Are you ready to start?
- Open in your Word the Form Letter that you want to sent in your customers.
- From the Menu Bar go in Tab Mailiing and click on Start Mail Merge.
- Select Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard.
- It will open a new section from the left side.
- In Select Document Type kepp the default option (Letter) for the specific Example. You can use and othe options as Email messages,Labels,Evnelopes and so on.
- Go in the bottom and click Next :Starting Document.
- In Select Starting Document use the default option <Use the current document>
- Go again in bottom and click Next:Select Recipients.
- In Select Recipients use the default option <Use an existing list>.
- In Use an existing List click Browse.
- Find your Excel file with your customers and click Open.
- Click OK
- And again OK.
- Go in the bottom and click Next : Write Your Letter
- Select the area from your Document that you want to copy the values from your Excel file. In this example we need Custmore Name and Total Amount.
- In Write your letter click More Items.
- Select the first field Name and click Insert.
- You will see that in the selected area will be change as <<Name>>. This is the area that will copy the data from the field.
- Click Close
- Click again in More Items and Repeat the Steps for the other available fields.
- When you finish click Close, Go in the right bottom side and click Preview Your letters.
- Check that the selected Areas which insert the field preview the data from the Excel.
Format Numbers After Mail Merge
After finish the Mail Merge you can see the Page of the first Invoice with the values which inserted from Excel.
As we can see in above image the number format has change from 10,998,076 to 1099876 after mail merge.But we need the right format because we have to do with Numbers and we don't want to have wrong values..
Before Complete the merge follow the steps.
- Right click in the Number and selec Toggle Field Codes.
- The field will change like
{ MERGEFIELD "TotalAmount"} - After TotalAmount" add the following line
\# €#,##0.00 - Now the field should be like
- Right Click in the field and select Update Field.
- Now your number has the right format and you can continue to Complete the Merge.
- Base on the customers that you have in the Excel the Word will be create x Pages with the same Letter and different data in the selected area that you inserted.
- Click Save and you are Ready.
What do the Symbols Mean?
- \# Begins the “switch” which tells the document to apply formatting to the number.
- € The character to display at the beginning of the number (in this case, a dollar sign).
- # The number of number signs (#) typed after the comma indicate the number of digits that should be forced to display.
- , Indicates that you want commas to designate thousands.
- .00 Indicates that you want to include a decimal point to two places with each number. Anytime a number to be merged doesn’t include decimals, it will display with zeros.
If you use Mail Merge you have the option to format Date and Time except Numbers.
You can find a usefull article in the link from Microsoft which explain all the commands that you can use.
Insert and format field codes in Word 2010.
I hope to find usefull my article!!
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