Working with Templates

Working with Templates

A lot of my clients use ACT! as they always have and don’t realize there are features that have been around forever. These unused features can change the way they get simple tasks done. One of those cool, unused features is the Mail Merge.

First, what is a mail merge? A mail merge is using the same “template” to send personalized letters to multiple people. The act of mail merging is really pretty easy, but it does incorporate a whole bunch of ACT! skills. Here are the basic steps:
· Create or have an existing template
· Create a lookup
· Run the Mail Merge Wizard
· Check it to make sure it looks the way it should
· Print
· Print Labels

In this post, I am going to focus on the creating of the Template. My newsletter reviews how to create the actual letters. I will also probably cover that part in another post.
When would you use a Mail Merge? I have used and seen my clients use them for a variety of reasons – invitations to events, invoices, introduction letters, special offer letters, proposals and many other reasons.

If you have ever taken an ACT! class by me, you know that I like to take the easy way to get to the end result. Here are the steps take to create a template:
1. Pull down the Write Menu, select Edit Template, select Letter or another template
a. I like to take an existing template and edit it, rather than recreating the whole template. I recommend that you edit the Letter Template to either have room for pre-printed letterhead or put your digital letterhead in the template.

2. A Word document opens up with ACT! “placeholders”. These fields tell Word where to put the ACT! fields. A Fields dialog box appears and you can select different fields to go into different places on your letter.
a. It is easy to see how the address block works, but you can also do personalized fields so you can say: I hope the weather in [City] is nice this time of year. The [City] would be replaced by the city for the particular contact you are on. I have a field in my database that indicates which version of ACT! the client is on. I can search by that field and I can also use that field to mail merge a letter with the user’s correct version.

3. Once you have edited your Template, do a Save or Save AS and rename your template.
a. This template looks like a Word document, but it is actually a .ADT (ACT Document Template).
b. If you have Word Documents that you want to use, we just have to copy the text into a newly created template.

4. Close the template, run your lookup, go through the Mail Merge steps and use the template you have created.

5. This also works for emails!
What are some great novel ways that you all have used Mail Merge?