The RealeSeller™ Mail Merge Basics

Understanding how the mail merge process works:
We have created our own RealeSeller Mail Merge Wizard that works with both RealeSeller and Outlook views in order to simplify the Microsoft Word mail merge process when compared to the Outlook Mail Merge process. We have also added the ability to include data from multiple data sets. This is important because it allows you to build a mail merge document that contains fields from a set of data whose values change from row to row (page to page) and also has a set of fields whose values will remain the same throughout the document.

For example, using the wizard you can choose one or more Prospects as your main mail merge data set. Later on in the wizard you also have the option to include data from the current agent and current company (your user information as listed in the RealeSeller folder in Outlook) and you can also click the add button to add one or more other types of data that will not change from one page to another.

The mail merge wizard will walk you through the steps of choosing the items (Prospects, Properties, etc) you wish to include in the mail merge and what fields from those items you will want available to insert into the Word document. When the wizard is complete, it will save or export the values from the fields you have chosen into a text database file. The text file will contain one row of field values for each item (i.e. Prospect) selected during the wizard. This text file will then be given to Word. Word will then connect to this file and create menu items allowing you to choose the fields to insert into your document. We further improved upon the Word Mail Merge by splitting this long menu of fields into groups of fields, making it easy for you to find the field you are looking for. We also put checkboxes beside these menu items to indicate that the field contains data. If the field does not contain data it will not have have a check mark beside it. When using Word's Next and Previous record buttons to move through and preview the exported data, RealeSeller updates the menu items with check boxes to show which fields contain data for the currently selected row.

After inserting the fields, text and pictures that you wish to use there are several options available to you. You can save the document for later use and/or you can merge the document to the printer, email or even a new document. The act of 'Merging' will cause Word to print, email or create a new document for each row of items (i.e. Prospects) that you selected during the mail merge.

Things to keep in mind:
Inserting mail merge pictures in Word is an often unused feature of the mail merge wizard that we have automated to make easier for you to use. However, there appears to be a bug in this feature of Word. If you insert mail merge pictures into the mail merge document and wish to save the document for re-use at a later date, be certain to save the file as a Microsoft Word Document Template (DOT file) and not a regular DOC file.  If you don't do this Word will likely break the linkage between the Word picture mail merge fields.  When that happens the pictures will no longer change from one row to another.

The mail merge wizard allows you to choose the fields you wish to include in the mail merge.  Remember, the more fields you choose, the longer the mail merge may take to perform.  After performing the mail merge into Word, you will then have those fields available to choose from to insert into the Word document. You must keep in mind that if you perform the mail merge initially and choose to include the Anniversary field in the document, and later perform the mail merge again with the same document but do not choose to include the Anniversary field, Word will give you an error that the Anniversary field is missing.

In Word 2002 and higher, Microsoft provided the ability to map the mail merge fields that RealeSeller will export to Word's common fields such as the Name, Spouse Name, Address, Etc.  This allows the Word Insert Address Block and Insert Greeting Line buttons to work.  This feature was not available in Word 2000 so the Insert Address Block and Insert Greeting Line may not work.

Tip:  When inserting mail merged pictures, Word will insert them as their true size.  You may need to resize the picture once it is inserted so that it is to your liking.  Check out this example:


The image on the left was resized using a paint program.  The one on the right was not resized and it was inserted and the resizing was performed (as best as it could) in Word.  Bottom line, resize the images before using them and they will look much better.

When inserting mail merged pictures, Word will insert the picture in-line with the text.  Users may want the picture to hover in front of, or over text, so that they can easily be dragged and positioned anywhere in the document. This can be done by right-clicking the picture and choose Format Picture.  Next choose In front of text or Behind text from the Layout tab.  The problem is this breaks the linkage of the picture to the mail merge field and the picture will no longer change from row to row.  To work around this, you could insert a Word textbox into the document and then insert the picture into the textbox. 

Warning!  You will have to turn off the Word option to automatically create a drawing canvas when inserting autoshapes, and then add or set the FieldCalcSecurityLevel  value in the registry to 0 under this section: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\xx.0\Word\Options

You can read the Microsoft Knowledgebase article here:
 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/330079/en-us.

Even after you do this modification to the registry, the pictures will not update when moving from row to row using the Next and Previous buttons, however they will update when merging to printer, email or a new document.  So, while you can't watch it happen on your screen, it does work properly when the real thing is happening.