Seeking Basic Mail Merge Program

July 9, 2007 12:56 PM

Would someone recommend a very basic Mail Merge Program. All I need is three elements: Ability to store names and addresses of customers Ability to write a letter and then merge the customer's addresses. I would like to have one or two sort fields to filter customers. Thanks in advance....Bruce
posted by Mckoan1 to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Maybe there are simpler ways to do it, but I've always used MS Word + MS Excel and it works great.
posted by jayder at 12:58 PM on July 9, 2007

LaTeX will do this. Depending on what your definition of basic is this may be ideal and it may not. This is a good primer for using LaTeX for common word processing tasks.
posted by lornoss at 1:03 PM on July 9, 2007

MS Word can merge to lots of things, including MS Excel, Outlook Contacts, MS Access tables, and raw text files (probably other things, too). If you need a free solution, OpenOffice can handle it.
posted by wheat at 1:07 PM on July 9, 2007

If you're going to be handling a lot of customer names, use Access rather than Excel. Most people (incorrectly) use Excel as a sort of rudimentary flat-file database, but Access will give you a lot more flexibility, filtering, etc.

Doing a mail merge with Word is very simple. Word 2003 it's
Tools --> Letters and Mailings -->Mail Merge.
posted by radioamy at 1:43 PM on July 9, 2007

Seconding Access + Excel + Word. Access is the most under-appreciated basic database out there. I wish they would make a version for Mac.

If you're on a Mac, Excel works fine, just a little cumbersome. Have you looked into fundraising software? I've worked with donorperfect, Blackbaud (Raiser's Edge) and Metafile (not a typo!) Results Plus . A little pricey, but adaptible to small business/non fundraising use.
posted by nax at 4:31 PM on July 9, 2007

OpenOffice does mailmerge pretty much the same way that the Microsoft suite does, and is free.
posted by flabdablet at 6:03 PM on July 9, 2007