MAPI Mail Merging in Office 2003

If you use Microsoft Outlook 2002 or Outlook 2003 and also have Microsoft Word of the same version number, you can take advantage of something called MAPI (Microsoft Application Program Interface) to access some very powerful features. Without getting too technical, MAPI is the techno-gunk that allows different Microsoft programs to work through a single client. That's why you can use Word in Outlook (as your email editor) and use Outlook in Word (for example, by sending a document as an email attachment).

MAPI really comes into its own when you want to use mail merge to send out personalised messages in the form of letters, emails or faxes. And this is especially easy to use if you store all your contact details in Outlook. To get a quick idea of how mail merge works from Outlook, open your contacts view, select a few contacts then choose Tools, Mail Merge.

If you use Outlook's powerful filtering options before choosing Tools, Mail Merge, you can very easily pick only those contacts you wish to mail merge. And because it's MAPI that makes this possible you can initiate a mail merge either from Word or Outlook. Personally I prefer starting in Outlook because its filtering capabilities are superior to those in Word.

Microsoft provides some great webpages that explains a lot of this stuff at https://office.microsoft.com/en-us/assistance/HA010349201033.aspx. Mail merging can be a bit tricky to first get to grips with, but once you've cracked it you'll be able to create personalised communications in super-quick time, all thanks to that MAPI techno-gunk.