Mail Merge

Mail merge is a powerful tool once you have it set up. These videos show you how to do it. The hour or so you spend playing with this will translate to hours saved every week and much better documentation quality in your practice.

Mail Merge 1 – Overview

This give you the general concepts of mail merge. If you understand these before you get into the nitty-gritty, it will make it much easier for you.

Mail Merge 2 – Setting up a Document Template

Here you learn how to create a new Document Template for use in Spinalogic, link the datasource and put in the fields etc.

Update: For easy organisation of your document templates you can drag-and-drop a document template into a different document template type and delete categories.

How to set up a document template

1. Create a word document
2. Link the document to Spinalogic – Go to Spinalogic > settings > clinical > document templates. Above the save button is a link called merge data location. Click the link and it will be copied to your clipboard.
   • Go back to Microsoft word. Select the ‘Mailings’ tab and ‘Select Recipients’.
3. Select ‘use an existing list…’ and paste (ctrl+v) into the file name. Click open.
4. In the mailings tab go to ‘insert merge field’. There will be a list of available merge fields you can use. Insert a merge field to the appropriate place in your word document.
5. Once you are done you can click ‘preview results’ in the ‘Mailings’ tab.
6. Now you can upload the document into Spinalogic. Just click the + and find the document.

Mail Merge 3 – Merging From a Report

Sometimes you may want to merge data from one of the Spinalogic reports. in fact, there are some that are specifically designed just for that purpose. Here you learn how to export those reports as an Excel file and link that to a new Word doc to mail merge.

Mail Merge Images

See here to mail merge images

Useful Links

Here are some useful links to mail merge training:

Mail Merge using Word 2007 and Excel 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9ExKwXQ3KQ

How to use mail merge to create form letters in Word (2002, 2003, 2007)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/294683

Microsoft Office Training Website
http://office.microsoft.com/en-au/training/