We’re going to tackle mail merge. Mail merge is a powerful, time-saving word processor feature for addressing mass-mailings and form letters. It’s easy but a little weird in LibreOffice, so follow along and learn how to be a mail merge guru.

When I hear "mail merge," I usually think of personalizing letters and printing envelopes. However, many other projects can make use of mail merge. This year I tackled a new Christmas gift project by using mail merge in OpenOffice.org (OOo) to create a tear-off daily calendar, personalized with holidays and family events. Here's how.

The office where I am network administrator switched most users to OpenOffice.org (OOo) back at version 1.1, and has followed the upgrade process to the current version 2.3 (a few poor users who have to exchange documents outside the office with high fidelity are still clinging to their MS Office 97).

Both AbiWord and KOffice were originally built for GNU/Linux, but both now have versions for Mac OS X and Windows as well. Both these FOSS programs have a Mail Merge function you can use for letters, labels, envelopes.

Mail merge, the production of multiple documents that differ only in minor details, remains a difficult task in OpenOffice.org Writer. Few use the function regularly, and when they do, the mail merge wizard seems to cause as much confusion as it resolves. FastMailMerge is not only simplicity itself, but a welcome relief that easily lives up to its name.

Mail merges are a great way to save time, since they pull information from the same fields, over and over again with each new record in your database. There’s only one problem—all records aren’t created equal; they don’t all have, or all need, the same fields. This article solves that perpetual problem with labels.

Despite the fact that open source has specialty label-and-business-card programs, most users are going to continue to create their documents in the word processor they feel most comfortable with like OpenOffice.org Writer.

Many users are content with the label and mail merge features in OpenOffice.org Writer, Abiword or KOffice for basic jobs. What if you want a smaller, dedicated program for elaborate formatting or graphics. In these cases, you should consider turning to gLabels.

The steps for setting up any mail-merge document in OpenOffice are easy; the one potentially gnarly bit is creating your contacts database in the first place. Your contacts list must be in Base, which is a bit of a pain. But the good news is Base can import data from most other databases, spreadsheets, text-delimited files, and email address books.