Create Edit Letter Format

Office Accelerator includes a powerful add-in called the Accelerator Macro Suite (AMS).  To create a customized merge letter in Office Accelerator using AMS, follow the directions below.

Creating Your New Merge Document

1. Open the Office Accelerator phone book and click the |Tools| menu, then select |Word Processor| to open Microsoft Word.

   If word doesn't open via |Tools|Word Processor|, see Word Processor Path.

2. From your Word document, click the |ADD-INS| tab and click |Accelerator|Create or Edit|Letter Format|.

   

   If you don't have an Accelerator menu, see Adding the Accelerator menu to Word.

3. The |Letter Document Format| dialog box provides the pre-defined letter merge documents that ship with Office Accelerator.  When you design a custom letter template, you will start by selecting one of these pre-defined formats.  In this example we'll use the Full Block Letter type, select the |Full Block| letter type then click the |Create New| button.

   

4. You will need to provide a unique name for your new custom letter document, in this example we'll call it 'Customer Thank You Letter'.  By default your new document will be created for use by just you (Personal Format), however if you would like to share the document with other Accelerator users, select the |Public Format|.  Click the |OK| button to save your selections.

   

   Public format documents are stored in the location determined by your user defined public documents path.  This path should point to the same location for each Office Accelerator user within your account e.g. \\shared\oadocs\ etc.
   
   
   
   Public Documents are available to those users with appropriate user rights.

5. Click |OK| to the message reminding you to save your changes.

   

6. Office Accelerator will now display your merge letter document in Word.  In this example, we'll create a 'Customer Thank You Letter' document and use it to create thank you letters for a group of contacts in Accelerator.

   

7. The Accelerator Full Block merge document is just like any Word document in that you can add and delete text and images as well as modify the formatting and layout of the document.  What makes this document unique is that it contains substitution and merge fields which are used to insert information from Office Accelerator into your document.  You decide what and where in your document information from Accelerator will be merged by placing merge fields in the desired location and adding values to the substitution fields.

   

8. In the example below, we have removed some of the merge fields and added text to the body of the letter.  Once you have completed modifying 'your' document, be sure and click the |Save| button, then close the merge document.  

   

   Because the merge document contains special attributes that work with Accelerator, be sure NOT to change the name or location of your document.  Simply press the |Save| button in Word to save your changes.
   
   
   
   
   

The following tables describes the substitution and merge field values respectively.  

Using Your New Merge Document

1. To use the merge document you created above, open Microsoft Word and click |Accelerator|Multiple Letters| located under the |Add-Ins| tab.

   

2. The Accelerator menu will return you to the Accelerator phone book where can search for the contacts you would like to send 'Customer Thank You Letters'.  Click the |Continue| letters button to proceed, all contacts in the current search result will be merged to your 'Thank You Letter' document.

   

3. There are 8 sections in the |Multiple Letters Options| screen.  The |Multiple Letter Options| screen corresponds to the substitution and merge fields in your 'Customer Thank You Letter' merge document.  In Section - 1 entitled |Letter Format| we need to select |Customer Thank You Letter| as this is the merge document we created above.  For our purposes we'll also use Section - 3 (Return Address), Section - 4 (Headings), Section - 5 (Closings), and Section - 8 (Document Tracking Log). 

   Click the |Continue| button to proceed to the next step.  

   

   Notice that the |Copy to Track Log| option has been checked.  This option copies the letter format description to Section - 8.  During the merge process, a log event (containing the text in Section - 8) will be created for each contact that is merged, this way you'll know which customers received your 'Customer Thank You Letter' and which did not.
   Each section of the Multiple Letter Options dialog box and its corresponding substitution and merge fields are described in the table below.

4. By default, your 'Customer Thank You Letter' will be sent to your word processor.  Typically, you'll want to use the |Display in Word Processor| option so you can view your document in the event you need to make changes.   You can also print the document directly to your default printer, select an alternate printer, or send the document as an email merge to Outlook.  Accelerator will merge all of the contacts that are in the current search result, however, you can select the range option and designate a specific range of contacts to merge from the current search result.  Make sure the |Display in Word Processor| option is selected and click the |Continue| button.

   

5. When the merge in complete, your 'Customer Thank You Letter' documents will be created in Word.  Each contact in the current search result will be merged to a 'Customer Thank You Letter' where it can then be printed.

   

Full Bock Merge & Substitution Field Values to Multiple Letter Options Mappings

Letter Formats that Ship with Accelerator