I have been experimenting and researching for several days to figure out how to do a Mail Merge that includes variable I edited my original post after finding very helpful tips from Paul, Doug, and Graham. I’m preparing a merge document that will be manually e-mailed to parents who have a child enrolled in a preschool. My screen shots have information blocked for privacy. I have to add FN into my hotkey combinations for them to work with my keyboard. Do not use FN if your keyboard does not require you to press it to activate the function keys.
Main Document: My main document includes merge fields for a child’s name and child’s picture.
Data Source: I used two fields in an Excel data source file: "Pic" to hold the names of each picture and "Path" to hold the name of the path to that *jpg picture. Note the paths include double backslashes. Make sure you have added them in the same pattern for your path. I advise keeping picture names short with no spaces.
- Reconnect to your Data Source file: from the Start Mail Merge group, click Select Recipients, Use an Existing List, browse to your Excel Data Source file. [I think if you wait to do this until after step 17, you get the error with the link to picture not working.]
- Press FN+ALT+F9 to display field codes.
- Click in the square in the banner on the right where the picture will be inserted:
- Press CTRL+FN+F9 to insert a pair of field boundaries.
- Click directly after the first opening field boundary and type INCLUDEPICTURE; click just after the first space following the typed text.
- Press CTRL+FN+F9 to insert a second pair of field boundaries.
- Click directly after the second opening field boundary, and type IF TRUE; click just after the first space following the typed text; type " (quotation marks).
- From the MAILINGS tab, Write & Insert Fields group, click Insert Merge Field list arrow; click Path.
- Type / (a forward slash).
- From the MAILINGS tab, Write & Insert Fields group, click Insert Merge Field list arrow; click Pic.
- Type " (quotation marks).
- Delete the space after the quotation marks you just typed and the closing field boundary.
- Click just before the last closing filed boundary; type
\d (backslash d).
- The field should look like this:
- Reconnect to your Data Source file: from the Start Mail Merge group, click Select Recipients, Use an Existing List, browse to your Excel Data Source file just to be sure you’re linked. Save the file.
- Press FN+ALT+F9 to toggle field code display off.
- From the MAILINGS tab, Preview Results group, click Preview Results.
- From the MAILINGS tab, Finish group, click the Finish & Merge button; click Send Email Messages.