Using The RealeSeller™ Mail Merge Wizard
Getting Started:
To start the Mail Merge wizard, click Tools, RealeSeller Mail Merge...
After selecting Mail Merge, you will see the wizard window in Step 1:
Step 1
If the currently selected folder is not a prospect or contact
style folder and is unsupported for this feature, options 1 and 2 above will be
unavailable. If you wish to use option 1 or option 2 but do not have the desired
folder selected, you can select the desired folder in Outlook now and the Mail
Merge wizard will update to reflect the newly selected folder.
What the various options settings do:
All items in current folder - will mail merge ALL items in the
currently selected folder from Outlook regardless of any filter or selection you
have set.
Selected items in current folder - will mail merge only with the
selected item or items in the currently selected folder from Outlook. This
option is useful if you wish to perform a filter and select all items with a
specific criteria. For example you could select the Prospects folder, perform a
filter on the category field for all items that have a category of Past Clients,
and then select all those clients using the standard ctrl+click or shift+click
methods. You can read about the finding, filtering, and sorting features
here.
Browse to select items - will allow you to browse and select one or
more items. Using this method, you can choose items from multiple folders if so
desired.
Current Prospect and Owned Property - will perform the mail merge with
the currently selected Prospect and his or her owned property as listed in the
Owned Property box on the prospects
record.
I already have a data file prepared - At the end of the mail merge
wizard you can choose to save the mail merge data as a file so that it can be
used again in the future. This is useful if you know you are going to mail merge
several different documents with the same data set. After performing the mail
merge once and choosing to save the data as a file, the next time you perform
the mail merge you can select option 5 and browse to the file you previously
saved.
Press the Next button to continue.
Step 2
You will be given the option to choose which fields to include in the mail
merge. If you had the Prospects folder selected at the beginning of the wizard
or if you chose the Current Prospect and Owned Property option or browsed for
one or more Prospects using the browse option, you will be shown all available
Prospect fields here.
Choose the fields you wish to use by putting a check next to the field name
(1).
You can optionally save the fields you checked off by clicking the Save button
(2). This will allow you to easily reselect these fields in future mail merges.
To select all available fields, put a check in the Check All checkbox
(3).
Note:
Just because you select a field in this step does not mean you have
to insert it into your document, you don't. Choosing a field here simply means it will be one of
the fields available for you to choose from and insert in your mail merge
document if you want to use it.
The list of available fields contains two column headers
(4). You can resize the
Field column header to shrink it and bring the Group column header into view. You can then click the Group column header to sort the fields by group rather
than by name and more easily find the fields you are looking for. You can
potentially have 100's of field names in the list so this will hopefully make it
a little easier to find what you are looking for.
Step 3
This step in the wizard allows you to include your
Agent and
Company info and pictures and other information that will remain
static/unchanged from one row to another. For example, if you wish to do a mail
merge to 10 prospects and include mail merge fields in the document for them and
one property, you can add that one property here by clicking the Add button
(1).
If you don't need to add more items and you are finished, press the Next
button and skip to Step 4.
Adding more items:
When you click the Add button, you will see a window you can use to
browse to and choose the item you wish to add (In this example we are using a
Property) (1). Select the property from the list
(2). Press the OK button
(3)
when you are finished.
You are now being prompted for a Group Title name. The name you add in
here will appear as a drop down menu of fields to insert into your Word document
(We just used the word "Property" in our example). Press the OK
button.
You will then be given a choice of fields (see image above) to include in the
mail merge for this Property item. Put a check next to any fields
you want to include and press the Ok button.
At last we are back to our Mail Merge Wizard window and we have the name of the
item we added in our example. Adding more items is easy, just follow the
same steps we just went through as many times as needed in order to get all the
information you need to merge.
Note:
If needed you can remove any of the added items by selecting it and then
clicking the Remove button (1).
Press the Next button to continue.
Step 4
This step will allow you to choose to do a mail merge with a new document or an
existing one.
New/Empty Word Document will create a new Word Document. You can choose
to make this new document a letter, mailing label or envelope type document. If
you choose mailing label or envelope, you will be given choices for the mailing
label or envelope type. If you wish to merge to a custom type of label or
envelope, choose an option that closely matches it and you can further modify
these settings in Word by clicking Tools, Letters and Mailings,
Envelopes and Labels...
Existing Word Document will allow you to browse to and choose an existing
Word document or Word template file.
RealeSeller Document Library will allow you to browse to and choose a
Word document or Word template file from the RealeSeller Document Library.
In this example we are choosing Letter under the New/Empty Word
Document selection. Press the Next button to continue.
Step 5
In this finishing step of the wizard, you can save the exported database file
for use with future mail merges. Press the Finish button if you aren't
interested in doing this and then skip the next part of this step.
Saving the exported data:
Put a check in the box (1) so the wizard will save the exported data.
Select the browse button to choose the folder you want to save the file to
(3). Type in a name for the file and
press the Save button in the browse dialog window. At that point
you will see the path and the file name (2).
Now press the Finish button to continue the process.
Click the Finish button. The wizard will begin exporting your data and when complete will launch Word.
After Word connects to the database file created by the Mail Merge, you will see
RealeSeller pop up with a progress window as it builds and separates out the
Word Mail Merge menu items into a grouped set of menu items that will make it
easier for you to find and insert fields into the database. This will be
the RealeSeller Mail Merge toolbox.
Step 6
The Field Set:
Common Contact Fields (1) - This is a list of fields containing data from your regular contact fields.
My Agent Fields (2) - This is a list of fields containing data from your Agent information in the RealeSeller folder.
My Company Fields (3) - This is a list of fields containing data from your Company information in the RealeSeller folder.
Prospect Fields (4) - This contains the list of fields from the Prospects we selected in Step 2.
To insert the Prospect Salutation merge field into your document, click Prospect Fields (1), then move over the word Name (2), then click Salutation (3), and then click the Insert Field button.
Tip:
You can preview the information in the fields by putting a check in the
Preview field data (5) box. You can also
insert a line feed or Prefix a field with the Field Name automatically.
To view a sample of your merged data, press the ABC button (see above left) and the merge field will display the data related to that field (see above right).
You can choose to merge your information to a new document (Selection 1), to a printer (Selection 2) [this bypasses the document creation], or merge to email (Selection 3).