NewDeal Hot Tip 1702

[Hot Tips for...] PIMs

NewDex Mail Merge Tricks

In NewDex, there is no field for salutation or nickname when doing a personalized mail merge. The manual describes using the default fields and merging your letter as: "Dear <<Index_Field>>", which comes out as "Dear Adams, Chuck" in the example they use.

Here is a simple work-around

NewDex contains several fields for phone numbers which have no numerical filters, so you can put what you like in them, like first names. The field "Phone_7" (which is just above the "Home" phone number) can be used to store data other than a phone number. For example, you could do this:

"Dear <<Phone_7>>", to print out "Dear Chuck," or "Dear Mr Adams" if you prefer.

If you wanted to become fancier, you could use the next field up ("Phone_6") to store a title like Dr., Mr., Ms., etc., and use "Phone_7" for the surname.

So, "Dear <<Phone_6>> <<Phone_7>>" could become "Dear Dr. Jones" or "Dear Ms. Jones".

One disadvantage with this method is that you have to have data in "Phone_7" (and "Phone_6" if you use it) in all the records you are going to merge. Another disadvantage is that you may actually need that many phone fields, in which case I use the notes field to keep track of the extra phone numbers.


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Last Modified 6 Mar 1999