Creating Mailmerge Letters

Creating Mailmerge Letters

Instead of displaying data in a table, it is possible to create a report that displays the extracted data in other formats such as a letter. This has the advantage that the letter will be automatically populated with personal details such as the student’s name, address and registration tutor. The creation of a mail merge letter involves two stages: 

The first is to create a report design that will extract the relevant data from SIMS .net that you wish to be displayed in your final letter.

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The second stage is to design the letter that you wish to generate and specify where on the letter you wish the data from SIMS .net to appear.

Parental Addressee/Salutation When creating letters you may wish to use fields such as Parental addressee and Parental salutation. In that case you should check that these have been completed within SIMS .net first. Parental addressee can be used to display the addressee above the pupil’s address on a letter, useful if using window envelopes. Parental salutation can be used to display the name of the parents, for example Dear Mr. and Mrs. Etc. Sometimes these fields are missed when pupil data is entered in SIMS .net and if so this information will be missing from any mailmerge letters in which they are used.

The Parental Salutation and Parental Addressee fields can be found within the Family/Home section of a pupil’s record.

Clicking the “cogs” button to the right of these fields will automatically generate a suitable Parental Salutation/Addressee based on the names of the parental contracts living at the same address as the pupil. Alternatively the required names may be entered manually.

Another option may be to update these in bulk through the route Routines | Student | Update Parental Salutation/Addressee.

Creating a mailmerge letter First we must create a suitable report to extract the SIMS .net data we want to appear in our letter:

Select Reports | Design Report.

Select Create a new report.

On the Select Data Area screen select Student. Click Next.

On the Refine Data Area screen select On roll. Click Next.

On the Select Data Fields screen select the fields you wish to use in your letter template: Legal Forename, Legal Surname, Year group, Reg group, Address block, Parental addressee, and Parental Salutation.

Click Next. If you only wish to generate letters for a particular group of students, e.g. a particular registration group, a filter must be added. On the Define Filter screen click New and add the filter:

Reg group is one of and Prompt at runtime.

Click OK.

Click Next until you come to the Define presentations screen.

At this stage we must tell SIMS .net that we wish to display our data using a mailmerge template rather than in the usual table in Word.

From the Presentation box on the left-hand side select Word Mailmerge.

The panel on the right will be updated to display Word Mailmerge Settings. Click New to create a new mailmerge template.

At this stage, because we applied a filter to the report with a Prompt at runtime, you will be asked to specify the group of students to be included on this run of the report.

Select the required registration group and click OK.

Microsoft Word will open where you can compose your letter. The text of the letter can be entered in exactly the same way as you would write a letter in Word.

However, where you wish data from SIMS .net to be displayed on the letter you must insert the required merge field. First position the cursor in the location where you wish the field to be inserted. On the Mailings tab click the Insert Merge Field button.

Clicking on Insert Merge Field will display a list of fields selected in the main report design. Click on the required one to select it.

In both case, once selected, the field will be displayed within the letter template in angle brackets , >.

Your letter may resemble the following example with a mix of text and merge fields inserted in the required places. Highlight the required one and click Insert. Once your letter is complete, you may wish to preview it.

Click on the Preview Results button on the Mailings tab.

An example of how the letter will appear when the report is run and data from SIMS .net is merged into the template will appear.

You may find that the Address block field does not format as required, with large gaps between each line of the address.

To correct this, you may wish to change the formatting of this text by highlighting the previewed address and then on the Home tab selecting an alternative style e.g. No Spacing from the Styles panel.

This should then close the gaps between the lines when the report is run.

Once your letter is complete Save (not Save As) the letter and Close Word. As you save the document in Word it automatically links the mail merge document to the report created in SIMS .net. Back in SIMS .net, click on Save As to save the report and associated template in SIMS .net.