> Mail merge

Can I do a mail merge using the latest version of Pages, or is there another app that I should use instead?

You used to be able to mail merge when printing from Pages, but this has become increasingly difficult – see bit.ly/pgsmerge.

Major office suites normally still feature mail merge. It has always been an important benefit of Microsoft Office, and Microsoft has a series of excellent tutorials at bit.ly/

ml135mailmg1 showing this being performed in Word 2013. The current version of Word for Mac can be used similarly. OpenOffice.org, which is free, also supports mail merge, and there’s a tutorial at bit.ly/ml135mailmg2.

The latter suite includes a wizard which steps you through the process, and provides previews. Essentially, you store details of the addressees in a spreadsheet or database, using standardized field names. Those match marked up insertion points in your word processor document: for example, the field “title” might be marked up as <title>. When you perform the merge, copies of the document are generated which substitute personalized information for the markup, in the required number of pages. Address labels should also be produced ready for printing.

If you want to send merged email messages rather than printed letters, two apps from the Mac App Store that you should consider are Mail Merge and SerialMailer. There’s a demo version of the former available from its website, while the Lite version of SerialMailer on the Mac App Store will give you a good idea of how it works.