Word 2016 Mail Merge for Mac

[MUSIC] Hello everyone, and welcome to your Word 2016 Mail Merge for Mac series. My name is Vonne Smith, and in this course overview, we're going to be talking about what is in this particular course, what is our target audience? I guess, I really should say who is our target audience? Anything we need to know before we get started and any extra tidbits that I might have for you. So this is really one topic, it's Mail Merge. This is a deep dive into the very popular and very powerful function within Word is the Mail Merge. Now if you are thinking mm-hm, why, I think I've seen some of this before in the Word Advanced series, well you are correct. We have a couple episodes in there to get you started. But in this series we're gonna really dive deep into the data sources. What does it really mean to have that data source and those connections. And the different types of data connections that you can make, whether we're using Excel or a CSV file or a TXT file, maybe even like a FileMaker Pro. So we're gonna cover all of those in those particular episodes. And once we get our data source then we're gonna learn how to connect that or create letters and labels, and envelopes and emails. And along the way we'll be talking about how we can add images into that. So really just kinda taking it a slower look, a really concise and extensive look at how we can perform Mail Merge. So hope we get into a level of confidence with this particular functionality. For you to be able to just blow right through it because once you do understand the concepts of it it can become very easy once you understand why we think is and why it's doing, what it's doing. We'll also be covering some rules that work in Mail Merge, some if, then, else statements, and some fill-in things, and some asks. So all sorts of really neat things than can really help you take your Mail Merge to that next level. So who is this for? Anybody that uses Word extensively or really just wants to know more about mail merge. This is something that can really help you automate your task in, your role within an office setting or in your small business, or in anywhere. And so Office users, that's a capital O with Office 365. So we will be using that account and all the different pieces within the Office 365. Suite is not necessarily for you have to be an office person within a physical building. You can be in any field of study or of work that just uses these pieces of software to help you. And like I said this is a deep dive into this particular functionality of Word. Yes, it's that extensive that we can have a whole series on just this one part. Some things that you need to know about before we get started. You need to have a basic understanding of how the operating system works within a Mac, what is your Finder, and how to move around it. But also a foundational knowledge of Word, Excel, and Outlook cuz we are going to be covering and using these other applications when using Mail Merge. So understanding how to format text, how to format graphical elements within your document how. And what and why do we use page layouts in Word. All of these can be found on other series just like the Excel, this is a show Excel but we will be using that in this particular series. And understanding the CSV file format and how we can export things and we're just entering in data in Excel in general. Also some basic inner concepts. Do you know what the inbox is? Do you know the out box is? Do you know what sent mail is? Do you know that you have contacts within Outlook? So those are some of the things that we're going to be kind of covering around within this series. So having a base knowledge of some other products is really going to hel[. Files and Notes, we have exercise files that accompany these episodes and episode notes so definitely check those out. You can find all of the files and the notes that are for this entire series within this course overview or in individual episodes, you should be able to find that button. And if there's anything missing or something's not working just go ahead and let us know, go ahead and shoot us an email. Or type in a help ticket, and let us know if something's missing so I know and I can go ahead and fix that. Now a little note about the files, is that with this particular series we are going to be making data connections from a Word file to an Excel or a CSV file. Or type in a help ticket and let us know if something's missing so I know and I can go ahead and fix that. Now a little note about the files, is that with this particular series, we are going to be making data connections from a word file to an Excel or a CSV file. And when you do that you're creating a path to that particular file format. It's gonna remember it on my computer. So when you open it it's going to tell you that the data file can't be found. And that the link is broken and you're going to need to relink it. Now if you're not sure what I'm talking about we do cover this in the letters Mail Merge episode where we talk about changing sources. And how to do things when you have a missing source. So definitely check that episode out and to be able to relink. And that's gonna happen pretty much in all of your files that I already have a data source established. So just wanted to give you that little FYI on that one. Some extras, yet we do have other courses on Excel and Outlook that are in this library so definitely check that out. And Word Advanced or Word X, so you can kind of re-up on some of that word knowledge. There's always other options in these products and everything in Microsoft, and computers in general. So if there's other ways to do things it probably does exist, I just might not cover all of them. Your updates those updates get me every time. So if you're seeing something in your particular environment that is not being displayed in mine, it might be that you're on a higher version of the software than I'm on at this particular point in the filming. So just make sure that you understand that. And you can always go into your help menu and check to see if you have updates to go ahead and get you to the latest and greatest. That's kinda the beauty of having our Office 365 products. There's answers out there and you can search for them. And so I encourage you to do that and read up on more about these types of topics. And different ways to do things, everybody uses these products for different reasons. I'm going give you examples as to why I use them and examples of how I use the certain functionality of Mail Merge but you might have some others. So try to correlate into your need and you might not need to use every single piece of this particular service and that's okay. Of course to me always having fun, I like to have fun this episodes. We like to joke and make things little light and light and airy for you. So hopefully go ahead and get those concepts across.So you can have fun performing Mail Merges and maybe it won't be such a daunting task after this. So definitely have some fun, stick around and I hope to see you in some episodes very soon. [MUSIC]