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Practice makes perfect. Therefore, we want to practice creating a mail merge in this section.

Before you start, use the command File | New to create a new document.

With the ribbon command Mailings | Select database | Use existing database , you assign the supplied example database addressbook.sqlite to this document. On Windows, you can find it in your document directory directly in the SoftMaker folder.

Then type the following text. Of course, you can abbreviate it or type something completely different. The only decisive factor is the following:

Important: Do not type the text in curly braces – these are database fields.

Instead, choose the ribbon command Mailings | Merge field at each of these points. Click on the corresponding field name in the dropdown menu. In this way, the database fields are inserted into the text.

You have now created a "template" into which TextMaker can insert the fields of the database records, one after the other, when printing.

Use the command Mailings | group Recipients | Select recipients to choose the database module for the example database addressbook.sqlite and enter a few records – as described in Adding and editing data records. Naturally, it is up to you to choose the names and addresses. Once you have entered the records, exit the database with the command Close database .

All the basic steps have now been taken and you could print your mail merge now. In the rest of this chapter, you will learn how to select the recipients of a mail merge – and how to actually print the mail merge.