Hello, I use a number of different letter templates to create personalized letters each day. Currently I use the "cut and paste" or "search and replace" to overwrite the prior letter's personalization with the current letter's personalized information. I only do 1 or 2 of each letter type each day so a mail merge isn't the answer. My thought would be to create a template with a data entry feature to it that would collect the personalization info and merge it into the merge fields. Or create fields in the letter that I could tab through rapidly. My objective is to create these letters faster and to avoid errors created through cut and paste. Any tips or guidance would be appreciated!

Barbara

You could set up a letterhead template. See http://wordfaqs.mvps.org/LetterheadRibbon.htm.

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thank you Stefan, my research has led me towards creating templates and Userforms to collect the personalized info. This sounds similar to what you are recommending.

Barbara

In part it depends on whether or not you will be reusing the information, that is using the same letterhead on a number of occasions. If so, consider keeping the information in a series of global templates that hold the information as AutoText. You could use the UserForm to store the information in a separate template. To use the different information you would load and unload the AutoText holding templates to switch it out.

Are you doing a mailmerge of additional information or are you simply typing letters? That is, are you sending out form letters with this information? If not, mailmerge would still work fine, I would expect. I have hundreds of mailmerge forms and letters that I use with a database of clients. I usually only do one at a time. I will do different forms on different days for different clients. The idea is to have one repository of the variable information and use it as appropriate. In my case, the forms all give me a rough draft that I adapt for the client's needs.

In your case, it could give you the your letterhead.

With either AutoText or a mailmerge you could have different text and even logos in the same positions in your letterhead format.

Here are some additional letterhead resources.
Tutorials
These are downloadable samples showing how different features work in practice.

UserForms will be a bit more "advanced" than what I had in mind. :-)

__________________
Stefan Blom
Microsoft Word MVP

Microsoft 365 apps for business
Windows 11 Professional

Thanks for all the Charles and Stefan! I'm already gaining an understanding of some of the different approaches. Maybe if I explain what I'm trying to accomplish more specifically you can help me find a good approach.

I have about twelve different letters -- all include letterhead and have the same page layout and formatting. The content of the letters are different. Each letter has about 8-10 fields for unique recipient information (names, addresses, dates, license numbers, etc.). I will also need to share the completed templates across my work team of five people. Usually only one or two of the same template are created for different recipients during a work session but the user may be generating 15-20 letters using different templates and different unique recipient information. For example, we may send Letter One to Clients A and C, Letter Two to Client Z, and Letter Five to Clients E and F. Would a mail merge be practical for that need?

The two problems I am trying to solve are that it is not very efficient to cut and paste. Over the course of a month my team sends out several hundred letters so this inefficiency is really multiplied, error-proofing the letters is an issue also.

So far my research indicates that I could create a template for Letter One.dot that would have bookmarks for the unique recipient information, embed a macro that would open a UserForm that would collect the unique recipient information and merge it into the letter. Am I making it too complicated?

Thanks again for the helpful suggestions, I'm looking forward to your further thoughts and ideas.
Barbara

This is how I would do it.

For the different senders, use AutoText and AutoText fields. Again the AutoText specific to each sender is stored in a different template which can be loaded as a Global Template but which is not automatically loaded.

You can load different templates (and unload them) using the Document Template button on the Developer Tab. These global templates will only store AutoText, no macros, so they do not have to be in Trusted Locations. One template per set of sender information. I thought I had a tutorial on this, but find that I do not.

Note, if the sender information for a particular user will not change, then I would have the information for that user load automatically. I have used this in a law office that has several lawyers sharing forms. Depending on the logged in user, different global templates are loaded automatically and the information for that lawyer is inserted automatically.

Then you can use mailmerge for the different recipients. You can have all your potential recipients in one data file, or you can have different data files. If all in one data file, you can select which ones get which letter prior to the merge. You can do them one at a time, too, pulling in the information for that recipient from the data file.

Mail Merge

If you are up to doing user forms, you could easily have a userform to determine which sender data set gets used and updates the AutoText fields in the letter.

Most of my work is one of a kind based on forms. For that, I have the macro call the mailmerge function to pick a recipient. If you tell it to pick from all fields, you can just put look for something that is in the recipient's data file. If it is the right one, you cancel and work from that. If it is not, you find next. If you have a unique identifier (customer number) for each recipient, you can search for that. I then save the previewed letter as a new document in my client's file, lock the merge fields, and change it from a merge document to a normal word document. It retains the data for that customer in the fields. If doing something for multiple recipients, I would do it differently. Then I would actually perform the merge, usually to a document that can be edited.