Extra Credit: Customizing Form Letters with Fields

As with so many other advanced Word features, merging data and documents occurs through the magic of Word fields. The various merge fields discussed in this chapter are just special types of Word fields—which in turn are a small subset of the fields available in Word. The Mail Merge Wizard simply puts a pretty face on the underlying fields: You get to use the merge fields without getting your hands dirty working with field codes, formatting switches, and the like. The fields themselves control all the nuances of merging. You can use any of Word’s extensive collection of fields in mail merge documents.

Two fields are useful if you want Word to pause the merge at each record, and let you type in custom data. Both {Ask} and {Fillin} request data for each merged record. The former places whatever you typed in a bookmarked location on the form letter; the latter replaces the field with the text you fill in, at the point in the document where you place the field.