Mail merge

Mail merge turns one letter into many. You write the letter once, put merge fields where names and addresses go, and Writer fills them in from a CSV file — one page per row. The controls are on the Mailings tab.

What you need

A CSV (comma-separated values) file with:

• A first row that names the columns, for example FirstName,LastName,Street,City.
• One row per person or record below it.
• Commas between values. Values that contain commas, line breaks or quotation marks go in double quotes, with a quotation mark inside a value written twice ("").
• UTF-8 text encoding.

For example:

FirstName,LastName,Company,City
Alex,Morgan,"Morgan, Lee and Partners",Leeds
Sam,Lee,Example Ltd,Bristol

Most spreadsheet programs, including Nixt Sheets, can save a sheet as a CSV file.

Writer ignores blank rows. A column with no name in the first row is called Column1, Column2 and so on, by its position.

Step 1: Open the data source

1. On the Mailings tab, in the Data source group, click Open a CSV….
2. In the file picker, choose the CSV file and click Open.

The status bar says the file name, the number of records and the number of columns — for example “addresses.csv: 2 records, 4 columns”. The button now shows the number of records. Click it again to choose a different file.

If the file has a first row and nothing under it, the status bar says the file name followed by “has a header row and no records”. If the file can’t be read as text, it says Could not read that file: and the reason.

Step 2: Insert merge fields

1. Put the caret where a value should go — for example after “Dear ”.
2. On the Mailings tab, click the fields list in the Fields group. It lists the columns of the data source.
3. Click a column name.

The field appears in the letter as the column name in guillemets, for example «FirstName». Add spaces and punctuation around fields as ordinary text.

Merge fields are saved as Word merge fields, so the letter still works as a mail-merge document in Word.

Step 3: Preview the letter

1. On the Mailings tab, in the Preview group, click the preview button (Show the letter as it reads for one record).

The letter shows the values from the first record. A banner above the page says Record 1 of the number of records, followed by the value of the first column, and explains that this is the merged letter, not the letter, and can’t be edited while it is on screen.

While the preview is on screen you can’t type or change formatting. Go back to the letter to edit it.

Step 4: Merge

1. On the Mailings tab, in the Finish group, click Merge (Make one page per record, fields filled in).

Writer replaces the document with one copy of the letter per record, each starting on a new page, with every field filled in. The status bar says Merged and the number of records, followed by “the letter itself is one undo away”.

How fields are filled in

• A field whose column is in the data source is replaced by that record’s value, keeping the field’s formatting.
• A field whose column isn’t in the data source is left showing its name, for example «Title», so a missing value is easy to spot.
• In the merged pages, fields become ordinary text.

Mail merge fills in fields in body paragraphs.

Merge fields from Word

A letter set up for mail merge in Word opens with its merge fields in place. Open a CSV data source whose column names match the fields, then preview and merge as above.