Word Mail Merge, Address Block

Jun 30, 2015 by azurous in Mail Merge

In this article I will explain word’s Address Block feature. Address blocks are mainly used when working with Mail Merge. The address block feature will only work if a Recipient List has been defined.

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Contents

What is it?

Lets say you want to send the same letter to 100 different people. Assume you want the address of each of the recipients to appear in the letter. For example consider the letter below:

The same letter will be send to the 100 recipients, except for the highlighted text. The highlighted text is the address associated with each recipient. There are 2 method for achieving this:

Manually writing the address for each recipients
Using the address block explained in this article

The address block will generate the address associated with each recipient.

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How to?

Before defining an address block you will need to create the main layout of the document and define a list of recipients. These are part of the mail merge process. Assuming the layout is ready and a list of recipients has already been defined follow the steps below:

Step 1:

Move the cursor to the location you would like to insert the address block. In this example we want the address block to display on the top left side of the document:

Step 2:

Click on the Address Block button on the mailing ribbon:

Step 3:

In the window that opens you can define how you wish the address block to display:

This will be further explained the proceeding sections.

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Match Fields:

Match Fields, What is it?

What do you expect to see in an address block? Probably a First Name a Last Name, City, State, maybe a phone number, …

So where is this data going to come from?

This data will come from the Recipient List previously created. If you remember from that article when we wanted to define a recipient list, we would define columns. Each column was associated with a certain type of data. For example consider the recipient list below:

As you can see in the figure above we chose the first column to display the recipient’s Last Name, the next column displays the Recipients First Name, ….

While it may be obvious for you what data each column is displaying but it might not be the same for Word. For you as the user it is obvious that:

This first column is storing the Last Name of the recipients
The second column is storing the First Name of the recipients
The third column is storing the recipient’s Title
The fourth column is storing the recipient’s Address.

But this is not the same for word. Word might not interpret correctly which column is storing what data. Therefore you might need to manually define (for word) what data each column is storing.

This can be done by using the Match Fields window:

For more information about working with the Match Fields window please see the link below:

Word Mail Merge Match Fields

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Preview:

There are 2 methods for previewing the results of the address block:

Method 1: On the right side of the Insert Address Block window you can see how the address will be inserted. By pressing the right and left buttons you can see how the address will be inserted for the different recipients:

Method 2: After closing the Insert Address Block window, by pressing the Preview Button you will see how the the address block is inserted in the document:

Note: You can press the Next and Previous buttons to see how each recipient’s address will display.

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Recipient Name Format:

On the left you can select how the recipient’s name should be displayed:

Note: depending on the format you select, you may have to define additional fields in the Match Fields window. For example for the selection above we would need to define the following fields:

First Name
Last Name
Suffix

But for the selection below we will also need to specify a First Name for the Spouse:

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Company Name, Postal Address, Address Formating:

There are several other options on the left side of the window:

Note: In order for these options to work correctly you must have defined the fields correctly in the Match Fields window.

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Line Spacing, Font, Color, …

After pressing the OK button the address block will be inserted in the position the cursor was located before opening the address block window. By pressing the Preview button, the address block will be displayed:

Lets say you want to remove the empty space between the address lines:

Select the address block
Click on the home ribbon
Click on the Show Paragraph button on the Paragraph ribbon
Select don’t add spaces between paragraphs of the same style

Note: This change will be applied to the address block of all the recipients.

Note: A similar approach could have been used to change the font style, color, …

You can download the sample file used for this article from the link below:

Address Block.Zip