Creating letters using a rule

There may be an occasion when you want to send personalized messages with customized details. For example, we want to send letters to recipients confirming that their proposal was accepted. In this letter, we will include the name of the contact person based on the category of the proposal. We can use an If...Then...Else rule to have Word choose the correct contact person.

Creating the document

We are ready to send letters to the people whose proposals were accepted. To create these letters, we will begin with a Microsoft Word document that contains the letterhead of the Midwest Cycling Cooperative. We will create the text of the messages by using the merge fields. 

Examining the data source

Now that the letterhead has been saved with a new name, let's examine the data source. For these letters, we will use the workbook, Reviewed.xlsx. This workbook contains all of the conference proposals as well as columns indicating if the proposal was accepted.

The Reviewed workbook contains all of the information for the submitted proposals. Column J indicates if the proposal was accepted. In addition, the accepted entries have been sorted into categories (column K) and assigned a room (column L) and a time (column M). 

Filtering source data

The letters we are composing will be sent to the people whose proposals were accepted. Our source file will need to be filtered to show only those entries. Filtering can be done as part of the mail merge process.

The correct workbook is now ready to be merged with the document.

Because we are sending this letter only to the people whose proposals were accepted, we need to filter the source data. We can do that now.

The Query Options dialog box opens: 

This dialog box allows us to filter or sort our source data. We can choose which field to filter, the type of comparison, and the text we want to compare.

We are filtering to see the accepted proposals. Therefore we will filter the Accepted field to show us the Yes values.

The Comparison field in the Query Options dialog box automatically changes to "Equal to." We want to compare the field to the word "Yes" so the "Equal to" comparison is what we need. 

There is no visible change to the email document. However, when we begin adding merge fields, only the recipients with accepted proposals will be available to us.

Inserting merge fields

Now that the letter is connected to the source data, we can begin inserting the merge fields to create the inside address and greeting line. 

With the address block in place, let's move down a couple of lines and add the greeting line.

The letter should look like the following: 

With the inside address and greeting line in place, we are ready to add the content to our letter.

Using the If...Then...Else rule

We want to send these letters to recipients confirming that their proposal was accepted. In the letter, we will include the name of a contact person. Which contact person is named will depend on the category of the specific proposal.

In this example, any person whose proposal falls in the Infrastructure category will contact Irma Taylor. All other recipients will contact Iseul Dae-Jung. Instead of creating the letters individually, we can accomplish this using mail merge and an If...Then...Else rule. 

We will begin by typing the letter content and using mail merge fields to add the proposal names and categories.

The letter should look like this: 

We can now create the If...Then...Else rule to insert a contact person based on the category. If...Then...Else rules are commonly used in programming. The concept is binary: if one qualification is met, a certain value is returned or displayed. If the qualification is not met, another value is returned or displayed. 

In our example, any recipient with a proposal in the Infrastructure category will be in contact with Irma Taylor. All other recipients should hear from Iseul Dae-Jung. 

The Insert Word Field: IF dialog box opens:

We can use this dialog box to build our If...Then...Else rule. We can enter the field that needs to be met (Category) as well as what type of comparison we want to make (Equal to). The following sections give us areas to add the text to be inserted if the category is met as well as text to be inserted if the category isn't met.

Now that the If statement has been created, we can add the text we want Word to use if the category is Infrastructure and the text to use if the category isn't Infrastructure.

The result of the If...Then...Else statement appears in the letter. We will review the letters for accuracy in a few moments. For now, let's add a brief signature.

The letter should look like this: 

The letter is addressed to the first recipient, Diane Dell. We see their address as well as the greeting line. Their proposal was titled E-Bikes: The New Transportation Experience and is part of the Education series. Iseul Dae-Jung is their contact person. 

Completing the mail merge

Now that we are sure our letters are correct, we can complete the mail merge. As always when finishing a mail merge, we have three choices: edit individual documents, print the documents, or email the documents. Let's edit the individual documents. This will create a new Word document that will contain a copy of each letter. 

A new Microsoft Word document named LettersX opens. The document contains 15 letters, one for each accepted proposal. At this point, we could edit individual letters, print them, or simply save the document to return to at a later time.