If you’ve been reading our website you should know a lot more about the different features included in Open Office – and one in particular that is used regularly is called mail merge. This is something that is used by a lot of businesses these days, so in this article we’re going to be explaining what mail merge is, how it can used in e-mail as well as the different settings that the software provides to give you maximum flexibility when it comes to using it.
Mail merge is something that businesses can use if they want to send out a letter or an e-mail to its customer base for a variety of reasons. This could be to promote a new offer or just to provide some extra information that others may be interested in. Having to create a document for each individual customer could be a long and very dull process, so mail merge automates this process by handling it all for you. The only thing you need to do is write the document and this office suite will handle the address and customer information side of things for you.
Now that you know what mail merge is used for, you should probably read the article on our website which explains how you can use it. The purpose of this article is to tell you about the e-mail settings so we’re just going to stick to this. You can find the options for this by opening up the office suite and then going into Tools –> Options. By going to the Writer tab, you’ll find another one called “Mail Merge E-mail” which is where you’ll find the settings we’re talking about. Now let’s explain what you can find.
- Your name – This should be fairly explanatory in itself, you just need to enter your own name. This will be displayed to users when you send out an email so we recommend that you use the name of the business you work for rather than a specific name, it’ll make things seem more professional and make it easier for you (as you won’t need to keep altering this option).
- E-Mail address – This is another obvious field that you need to enter, it’s the email address that you want e-mails to be sent to and from. This again should be a generic business address rather than that of a specific person at the company. Note you will have to enter passwords later on to authenticate this e-mail address so make sure it is valid and exists on the server.
- Reply address – If you want e-mail replies from customers to be sent back to a different address other than that given in the e-mail address field, this is where you’ll want to enter it. Whenever someone presses the reply button after reading your e-mail, their client will automatically choose to send the e-mail to the address in this field rather than the original one which sent it.
- Server name & port – This is for the outgoing mail server and not the incoming one. These details need to be correct otherwise you won’t be able to send out the e-mails properly, if you aren’t sure what you need to enter then you should probably contact the people who manage the e-mail server as these people will know. You can find the outgoing mail server for services such as GMail, Yahoo! and Hotmail by using the Google search engine.
- Server Authentication – This is a separate button you’ll have to click which will show you yet more options regarding the usernames and passwords used for your mail server. These are essential as they supply the connection from this set of tools to the outside world, without these details being correct the office suite will not be able to send out all of the documents you’ve created through mail merge.
In conclusion, there are quite a few different settings included by the software to help you customize the office suite to make it fit what your purpose is. If you have any problems filling in these details you should ask people in the company who have more technical knowledge as they should be able to enter it all for you. When you’ve done this, you’ll be able to use mail merge to send out as many e-mails to your customers as you like and it’s all free and easy to use. The program gives you everything you could need to do this so if you haven’t installed it onto your computer yet, we recommend that you go ahead and do so.
Tags: mail merge, open office, writer