What is a fax merge or mail merge?
About FaxTalk Fax Merge for Microsoft Word
FaxTalk Fax Merge for Microsoft Word has two purposes, it allows you to send fax merges and it simplifies faxing from within Microsoft Word.
Simplify Faxing from Microsoft Word
FaxTalk Fax Merge simplifies faxing from within Microsoft Word. For example, you can fax any open document in Microsoft Word via a fax icon, retrieve a fax number from a document automatically and add it to FaxTalk Send screen via built-in Word styles, automatically switch to the FaxTalk printer driver and switch back to your original printer when you are done. You can also set specific options for sending, such as setting a default resolution when sending faxes or printing a copy of your Microsoft Word document to your local printer every time you fax. However, the primary function and most powerful feature is performing fax merges.
What is a fax merge or mail merge?
Included with Microsoft Word is a feature called mail merge. A mail merge allows you to create a form letter that contains personalized information for the recipient. An example would be sending a payment reminders to customers with outstanding accounts, each letter would contain the name and address of the recipient, the payment due amount, and payment due date and any other information you’d like to include. While the main components of the letter will remain the same for everyone, the greeting, address, due date, amount or other information is personalized for the specific recipient. Printing and mailing these letters manually is easy enough, but stuffing envelopes and mailing is time consuming and expensive. This task can be accomplished with ease by faxing instead of mailing using the FaxTalk Fax Merge for Microsoft Word. You can also use the FaxTalk Fax Merge for announcing new products, sending press releases, advertising, marketing & promotions, bulletins, newsletters and more.
A mail merge in Microsoft Word consists of two components, the template (for example, a letter), and a data source (a recipient list that contains names, addresses, phone numbers and any other personalized information.)
The template is the document you want to fax. It contains the body of the message along with placeholders which are replaced with the personalized data that you want to appear in the fax. The placeholders that appear in the document are linked to a data source. The data source is any type of database that can be linked to Microsoft Word. This includes a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, Outlook contacts, Hotmail Live Contacts, an Access database, dBase, SQL, and any ODBC connected database.
More info on FaxTalk Fax Merge for Microsoft Word
Want to see it in action? We created a video showing an example of a fax merge using FaxTalk Fax Merge with Microsoft Word here:
Video of FaxTalk Fax Merge for Microsoft Word