Articles and Information
by Members for Members

Document Templates and MailMerge

by Lee Alexander

Templates

There is an old adage, “One picture is worth a thousand words.” That might be a slight exaggeration in the case of a letterhead; however, creating a personal template for your word processor can convey a good deal of information to the reader. Whether it is whimsical or business oriented, it is definitely the first thing the reader sees. Think of the simple graphics associated with some international brands. I am not suggesting your logos will become as famous as the Nike swoop, the cursive Coke, or the block-lettered IBM . Depending upon its design, it can portend a feeling for the content even before the reader gets into the essence of your message.

I typically use two letterheads, depending upon the recipient and the theme I wish to instill. One is computer oriented and the other relates to my hobby of woodworking. Okay, you say, “But my talents lie elsewhere than graphic design. How do I go about creating such a graphic?” For a simple answer there is a boundless number of clip art pictures, both within programs on your computer and, of course, the ubiquitous Internet. Consider the clip art I started with for the computer theme.

For this logo I used Microsoft's Windows application, Paint. I imported a black and white clip art piece and applied color and the text. So much for artistic talent! One problem with this graphic is its size – 87 KB as a .bmp (bitmap) file. Using a photo-editing program, I saved it as a .gif (Compuserve's graphic interchange format) file that is only 2 KB in size. Not as sharp as the original bitmap but quite sufficient for casual correspondence.

  The other letterhead, hobby related, uses this picture: along with personal information such as address, USPS and Internet, and phone number. The logo was created as a bitmap in Paint and then Saved As … a JPG file of only 2.81 KB size.

The third graphic used in a Word template is our own webmaster's ( Nancy Cottrell's ) design. She created this logo for the T-shirt member renewal promotion.     I kept this template very simple, adding only a Date field at the left margin. The graphic is a GIF of 9.15 KB, with the resulting template a modest 29 KB, suitable for an e-mail attachment. I would like to add a caution at this point: consider how you are going to use the templates. For a formal document, such as a resume that you will print and mail, you can go all out with fancy high resolution graphics. If you intend to e-mail or fax your letter, consider the time required to transmit it and whether the recipient will have the patience to download it.

If you want to have the files available as templates when you ask for a new document, it is important that they be in the right format and in the right place. In Microsoft Word, make sure you save the file with the extension (the three letters after the period) .dot, as in MyLetter.dot . The extension for a word processor template in Microsoft Works is .wpt. As to the location, it must be in the proper existing folder for the application's templates. Typically, the folder is called Templates and you can find it via a search in Windows Explorer. On my home computer, the search turned up 5 folders named, Templates. The correct one (for me) was that with a path that included Office.

As you can see, there are few limitations to being creative with this topic. In the interest of brevity, I have not tried to include photos. With simple, inexpensive photo-editing programs and a wealth of sources (including the Internet), you can spice up your correspondence with a minimal expenditure of time and effort. Like most new ventures, the more you do, the better you get.

Mail Merge

What is a Mail Merge? Typically, it is a process of sending a single message to multiple recipients or using a data base to print a series of labels. Usually the labels are filled in with names and addresses as with our newsletter. However, the labels could contain any text of a sequential nature such as Box 1 , Box 2 , etc. You could even print labels of fractions to denote the sizes of tool bits or text identifying the items of a collection. In Microsoft Office, or any of its applications, the source of data for a Mail Merge can be a table in Word, a spreadsheet in Excel, or a database in Access. Microsoft Works, on the other hand, is a little pickier – it wants a Works database (*.wdb). Don't panic if you have set up your address file in a Works spreadsheet instead of a Works database file. Simply copy the data (<Ctrl> C) to the Clipboard and then paste it (<Ctrl> V) into a new database file after setting up the proper fields.

In both Word and Works, a Wizard will take you in hand to execute the proper steps for a successful merge. One note of caution – if you use an Excel Workbook with multiple worksheets, make sure the first worksheet is the one with the data to be linked. The wizard dialog box has advanced options for selecting records, but it is much simpler to create a first worksheet and select use all records .