How to Insert Custom Merge Field in Word

imagine you want to inform students of your institute about their grades and the date of starting new term and also you want to add some comments in letters about the result of their exam.

If you want to write letters for them one by one it would be time-consuming and very difficult especially if you had in your list a lot of students.

You can use a custom merge field to personalize your letters and also make your letters ready much faster and easier.

Here we are going to explain them with one example.

How to Insert Custom Merge Field in Mail Merge;

In this example we have 3 items in our letters which we should change them for each student, here we are going to explain this work with merge field.

1- Select items and delete them.

2- Go to the Mailing tab.

3- Click on Insert Merge Field.

4- Choose the appropriate field for each item.

5- After you insert all fields click on the “Preview Results”.

You can see your desired field was added in your document.

How to Add Individual Comments for Each Letter;

For adding comments in your letters there are different methods here we are going to explain some of them.

How to Add Individual Comments for Each Letter Manually

You can Merge all letters in one file and add your comments one by one.

Pay attention to this method is good for letters because after you finished your job you can print them and send them to the person that you want.

1- Click Finish and Merge.

2- Click on Edit Individual Documents.

3- Select All and click on Ok.

Now all letters were merged in another document.

You can go to each letter and add your desired comment for each letter.

4- Click on File.

5- Click on the Print key and Print your letters.

How to Add Individual Comments for Each Letter by Excel

If you have your recipient list in the excel file you can follow these steps to add your comments.

1- Save your file and close it.

2- Open your excel file.

3- Insert a new column for your comments and insert your comments.

4- If you want to add a paragraph in your comment, you can hold Alt and press Enter key.

5- Add all comments in your excel file.

6- Save your excel file and close it.

7- Open your Word file.

8- Click Yes.

9- Place your cursor in the position which you want to add your comments.

10- Click on the Mailings tab.

11- Click on the Insert Merge Field.

12- Choose Comments field.

You can see the Comments field was added in your file.

13- Click Preview Results key.

Here you can see the comments in your documents and you can check all letters by pressing the arrow.

How to Add Individual Comments for Each Letter with Rules;

If you have only one condition in your file you can follow these steps to write your comment in letters.

1- Place your cursor in the position which you want to add your comments.

2- Click on the Mailings tab.

3- Click on Rules.

4- Click on “If…Then…Else…” Command.

5- In this dialogue choose your desired items.

Here we chose “Last Course grade” in the Field name part,

• In Comparison part, we chose “Less than”.

• In “Compare to” part, we chose 65.

• In the “Insert this text” you can write your desired text if the condition is true.

• In the “Otherwise insert this text” part, you can write the sentences which if the condition will be wrong, you want to have in your letters but here we keep it empty because we don’t want to write any comment in this situation.

6- Click Ok.

By this command, the program will write our desired comment for students that their grades are less than 65.

How to Add Individual Comments for Each Letter with Field Code;

You can add your comments manually as we explained before but if you have a lot of students in your list, it can be hard for you to write a comment for each letter, because of that you can use Rules.

But if you have more than one condition in your document, you can not use Rules and you should use Field codes;

Here we are going to explain this command with one example;

In this example, we want to add one comment for students that achieve grade less than 65.

We want to add one comment for students that achieve grade equal to 90.

We want to add one comment for students that achieve grade equal to 95.

We want to add one comment for students that achieve grade equal to 100.

For that, you should

1- Click on the place which you want to add your comment.

2- Hold Alt and then Press F9.

3- Hold Ctrl and then F9.

You need If condition commands for inserting your comments.

4- In the bracket, write IF and then click on the space, then in the Mailings tab Click on the Insert Merge Field.

5- Click on the “Last-Course-grade” Field.

6- You can follow the below picture for writing the formula.

7- For other Condition should write the same formula, you have the picture of them in the below picture.

8- Hold Alt and then Press F9.

9- Press F9 to update the form.

Now you can see for each condition the program will show the different comment.