Mail Merge

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Borderboy
Posts: 1
Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2018 1:00 pm

Mail Merge

Post by Borderboy »

Never done this before can someone point me in the right direction

I have a Spreadsheet for my Xmas card list created in Planmaker. Contains columns for Names Addresses etc for all those I have sent to and received from

Where can I find instructions of how to take these names and addresses from Planmaker and quickly copy them onto Textmaker so they can be transferred to envelopes to send out the cards

Assume it is some sort of mail Merge Never done this before Thanks
Jossi
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Re: Mail Merge

Post by Jossi »

1. To make things easier, your spreadsheet in PlanMaker should have field names in the first row (e.g. First Name / Name / Street / City / ZIP) and the data for each person in a separate row below. Make sure that the format for all cells in the table is set to "Text", otherwise fields containing figures (like ZIP codes) might be exported in a strange format. Now go to File > Save as... and choose "dBASE (*.dbf)" as file type (it's pretty far down in the list). Click "Save" and in the dialogue box that follows, check "First row contains field names". Leave the character set at "DOS".
2. In TextMaker, go to Insert > Envelope... and insert your name and address into the field "Sender". You may either use your user data (if you have stored them in TextMaker) by clicking the button "User data" and then the items in the list, or type plain text. If you want to print envelopes for more than one recipient, leave the field "Recipient" empty.
3. Now adjust paper settings (size of envelope and orientation in the printer), margins and positions of "Sender" and "Recipient" fields. Typeface and size for the sender and recipient fields can be changed by clicking the "A" buttons on top of the fields. Then click "Create new document", and you see the envelope with your sender data and an empty address field.
4. For the next steps, it's easiest to use the "Mail merge" toolbar. If it isn't visible already, go to View > Toolbars...", check "Mail merge" and choose a convenient position for the toolbar.
5. In the "Mail merge" toolbar, click the icon "Select database" (there are tooltips for the icons) and "Use existing database", then open the *.dbf file you saved from PlanMaker. Now set the cursor into the empty address field of your envelope, click the icon "Insert merge field" and then the fields in the list to insert them as placeholders into the envelope template. (NB. In all other respects, the fields "Sender" and "Recipient" are just ordinary text fields, so you can arrange the contents, adjust line spacing, insert blanks and returns and change typeface or size just as you want them to be.)
6. When the envelope looks as desired, set the cursor outside the fields and check "Show merge record" in the toolbar. Now you can either go through all addresses by clicking the triangles in the toolbar beside the number field and print them individually, or print all or selected adresses in a batch by clicking the "Merge print current document" icon in the toolbar.
7. Envelope printing can be a bit tricky at times, so I strongly recommend to print a single envelope first and look if it comes out right before you print the lot. If there are issues with the print result, go to File > Page setup... and adjust the settings. Be prepared to waste an envelope or two before everything is perfect. Good luck!
Imsparky349
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Mar 09, 2019 11:19 pm

Re: Mail Merge

Post by Imsparky349 »

I'm seeing in quite a few posts that you only need to select "Insert > Envelope" to get to the envelope format. I don't have that option on my version of "TextMaker for Windows 2018". Can I even print an envelope without a text message to merge?
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