Одним из недостатков использования слияния для создания документов является то, что вы рискуете сделать больше ошибок, чем если бы вы создавали каждый из ваших документов по отдельности. Если вы не очень хорошо знакомы со слиянием почты, риск совершения катастрофических ошибок, которые могут испортить все ваши печатные документы, намного выше.
Это не означает, что опытным слияниям почты не нужно будет корректировать свои документы. Следующие пункты — это первые 5 ошибок слияния, которые вы должны проверить в своих документах, прежде чем завершать их и отправлять на печать.
Полнота
It is important for you to double-check whether you inserted all the necessary information required for a successful mail merge. It is quite easy to overlook a field when you are creating your document. Pay particular attention to addresses and more importantly, ZIP codes. You should also ensure that the greeting lines or other areas where you have inserted several fields in succession are all filled out correctly.
Accuracy
While this may seem like common sense, you would be surprised at how many people mess up their mail merges because they didn’t check for accuracy. To ensure the accuracy of your mail merge, you will need to ensure that you inserted the correct fields in the correct locations. If you have fields with similar names, it is all too easy to insert the wrong one. If you find you’re making this error frequently, it is a good idea to re-evaluate the names you’re giving your fields to avoid any future confusion.
Spacing
Spacing may not seem like the most important thing when working with mail merges, but spacing does play a significant factor. Sometimes it is difficult to tell how many spaces you have entered into a document. The use of mail merge fields makes it even more difficult to tell, particularly when they are close together. You may even find that you have omitted spaces altogether. It is important to check your document to ensure that you have spaces between all the fields otherwise, the final product will just be several massive illegible run-on words.
Punctuation
Similarly to spacing, many people overlook the value and importance of punctuation when working with mail merges. It is easy to overlook your punctuation when working with mail merge fields because of spacing. You will notice that you often misplace punctuation, omit it completely, or add double punctuation when you have multiple mail merge fields in a row.
Formatting
The formatting of your text is one of the key mistakes that lead to a «mail merge not working» Google search. It is important for you to check whether the formatting applied to your mail merge fields is correct. Whether you are a newbie mail merger or you have completed hundreds of mail merges, it is important to check your mail merge fields for italicization, underlining, and bold formatting and correct them before you finalize the Mail Merge.
Wrapping Up
This is by no means an exhaustive list of errors you can introduce in a mail merge process, but it is a good place to start. And it goes without saying that you should proof for other errors, such as typos and misspellings, that can occur in any document. Nobody’s perfect; some people are just better at pretending they are!