Creating a sign with mail merge

The final things we need to create for our conference are signs telling attendees which presentation is taking place in a specific room at a specific time. Using a pre-designed document, we can insert merge fields to quickly create these signs.

Creating the document

To create the signs, we will begin with a Microsoft Word document that contains the standard text as well as placeholders for the merge fields. 

Selecting and filtering the data source

We need to create a sign for each conference session. The proposals, along with the corresponding category, time, and room number, are in the Reviewed workbook. We will need to filter the worksheet to only show the accepted proposals. 

There is no option in Mail Merge for Office for creating a sign. Therefore we will use the Letters option.

The Reviewed worksheet contains all of the proposals submitted to the conference. We only need to create signs for the proposals that were accepted and will be presented. This means we will need to filter the source data to only show the accepted proposals and presenters.

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 proposals that were accepted. Therefore we will filter the Accepted field to show only the Yes values.

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

Inserting merge fields

Now that the sign document has been connected to the filtered source data, we can begin replacing the placeholder text with merge fields. 

The creator of the sign put the merge field placeholders in italics. 

Now that the first and last name merge fields have been inserted, let's continue adding merge fields to the sign. We will add the proposal, category, time, and room. 

The sign should now look like this:

Previewing the merge results

Now that all of the merge fields have been inserted, let's preview the sign. This will give us an opportunity to make any spacing, punctuation, or other adjustments. 

Using this preview, it may be easier to notice and fix any issues. 

It is immediately obvious that the italic style used to designate the merge field placeholders has remained. The merged fields are still in italics on the sign. Let's remove this style from the text.

While we could select the individual merged fields, we'll select all of the text on the sign, apply, and then remove the italic style. 

Now that we've made any necessary edits, we're ready to complete the merge. 

Completing the merge

When finishing a mail merge, we have three choices: edit individual documents, print the documents, or email the documents. Let's choose to edit the individual documents. This will create a new Word document that will contain a copy of each sign. We can then print all or some of the signs or save the document for later.

A new Microsoft Word document, LetterX, opens. There is a page for each sign. At this point, we can save the document, print the signs, or edit the signs.