Word informs you that you need to edit your main document because it could not locate any merge fields in it.
Use the controls in the dialog box to locate the file you want to use for your data source.
Click on the Create button in step 1, Main Document.Word displays the Mail Merge Helper dialog box. Choose the Mail Merge option from the Tools menu.If you are using an older version of Word (Word 97 or Word 2000) then the steps are quite a bit different: (Yes, this is the same thing you clicked in step 8. At the bottom of the task pane, click Next: Write Your Letter.The information in the task pane is updated to reflect your choices regarding the data source. Use the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box to make changes to which records are to be used in the merge and to modify the order in which the records are merged.Word displays the Mail Merge Recipients dialog box. Using the controls in the Select Data Source dialog box, locate the file you want to use for your data source, then click Open.This dialog box is very similar to a standard Open dialog box. If you chose Use An Existing List in the previous step, Word displays the Select Data Source dialog box. You can also choose Select From Outlook Contacts or Type a New List. If you already have the list in a disk file of any type, choose the default of Use An Existing List.
Specify where you want the merge data to come from.The wizard's next step is displayed in the task pane. At the bottom of the task pane, click Next: Select Recipients.You can choose either of the other options (Start From a Template and Start From Existing Document) if they are more appropriate for what you are doing. If you have a document open (such as the one mentioned in step 1), you should choose Use the Current Document. Specify what you want to use as you starting document for the mail merge.At the bottom of the task pane, click Next: Starting Document.In most cases you will choose Letter, but you can also choose any of the other options. From the list of available document types provided in the task pane, select the one that most closely matches the type of document you want to create.Word displays the Mail Merge task pane at the right side of the screen. Choose Letters & Mailings from the Tools menu, and then Mail Merge Wizard from the resulting submenu.If you want to use an existing document as the basis for your mail merge, load that document from disk.To create your main mail merge document and attach a data source to it when using Word 2002 or Word 2003, follow these steps: Exactly how you do this depends on the version of Word you are using. It includes everything Word needs to create the finished document, including placeholders for the data that Word extracts from a data file.Ī mail merge document is not complete, however, until you have also specified a data file that you want to associate with the main document. This document is the "template" or "boilerplate" for your finished document.
In order to take advantage of this feature, you need to create a main document. Word includes a very powerful mail merge feature.