There are two ways you can insert
Dear (someone)
in a Mail Merge Main document. If that is not the question you need an
answer to, suggest you keep the following material (as you will probably
need it sooner or later anyway) and spell out what you want to do. At this
point, it would be useful to know the version of Word.
If you are using Word 2002 or later, you can insert a "Greeting Line" field
(you should find the option on one of the pages of the Mail Merge Wizard's
task pane, or you can enable the Mailmerge toolbar using e.g.
Tools|Customize, and use the 5th icon from the left).
Or, you can construct your own "Greeting lIne" using bits of text and
individual fields from your data source.
Each method has its advantages and disadvantages, depending on what you are
trying to do.
When you use the "Greeting Line" field, Word constructs the line from a
number of pieces of information in your data source, e.g. Title (as in Mr,
Mrs etc.), LastName and so on. However, if you use names in your data source
that it does not recognise - for example "FamilyName", you will have to use
the "Match fields" option to tell Word which field in your data source
contains the "LastName" and so on.
If you do not (or cannot) use the "Greeting Line" field, you will have to
construct the greeting yourself from individual fields, which you can insert
in various ways depending on the version of Word. Personally, I prefer to
insert the special "field braces" using ctrl-F9 to give {}, then type the
rest, e.g. MERGEFIELD Title to give
{ MERGEFIELD Title }
Constructing the greeting from individual fields is not always easy /unless/
your field always contains exactly the text you need (perhaps including the
"Dear". For example, in some cases you might want to say
Dear Ms Carter
sometimes you might want
Dear Diana
sometimes you might want
Dear Mr and Mrs Carter
and in some cases you might just want
Hi Dave,
and so on.
So you really need to make sure your data source has the information you
need to create the greeting you want.
For example, suppose each of your records potentially has two names, one
consisting of forename1 and surname1 and the other of forename2 and
surname2. Suppose forename1 and surname1 are never blank, but forename2 and
surname2 are either both present or both blank. And suppose you want
Dear forename1 surname1 (where forename2 and surname2 are blank)
and
Dear forename1 and forename2 surname1 (where the names are not blank but
surname1 = surname2)
and
Dear forename1 surname1 and forename2 surname2 (where the names are not
blank and surname1 <> surname2)
In that case, you can combine "IF" fields with MERGEFIELD fields to get what
you want, e.g.
Dear { MERGEFIELD forename 1
} { IF "{ MERGEFIELD surname2 }" = ""
"{ MERGEFIELD surname1 }"
"{ IF { MERGEFIELD surname2 } = { MERGEFIELD surname1 }
"and { MERGEFIELD forename2 } { MERGEFIELD surname1 }"
"{ MERGEFIELD surname1 } and { MERGEFIELD forename 2 } { MERGEFIELD
surname2 }" }" }
and so on...
