Mail Mania: Creating a Simple Mail Merge with NetClassroom Usernames and Passwords
Now that you've created your NetClassroom parent videos and customized our parent tutorials to your school's specifications, you probably want to send out a letter including this information and student and parent NetClassroom logins.
To create a custom merge letter, first create the query of students or parents you want to mail, and then include the query in an export. Select Blackbaud Simple Mail Merge as the export format. Let us take a moment to explain the naming convention: Blackbaud because the letter is created, edited, and saved within your Blackbaud software, Simple because it's easy, and Mail Merge because that's what you're doing!
After you've added your query on the Filters tab, select the Output tab and add any other fields, such as student name, address, grade level. If you are creating the letter from a student export and want to include the student's NetClassroom login information, select Online ID and Online Password from the Student grouping. To include parent login information in the same letter, select Online User ID and Online Password from the Relationship section. Oh, don't forget to select the specific parental relationships, otherwise you might accidentally export Endora's login information instead of Samantha's. If you're using an individual export, then you'll reverse those instructions, i.e. filter on the student relationships, such as son or daughter.
Your fields are selected, and now it's time for the merge letter! Click the Edit Word Merge and you'll get a blank Word document. For the folks using Office 2007, select the Add-Ins tab. For those playing at home on version 2003 or lower, the insert fields drop-downs will be on your screen.
To insert a merge field, place your cursor where you want the merge field, and then click Insert Education Edge field, followed by your field selection. Continue this until you've selected all your merge fields, and then click Save and Return to EE7 to Merge, which saves your merge document to the database. You won't be able to access this document through Word; the only way you can edit this document is to open the export and click Edit Merge Document. To generate your documents, click Merge Now on your export screen.
Next time we'll build off the simple mail merge and look at conditional mail merges.