Word Mail Merge Using Filtered Views

The mail merge feature in Word (different from launching the mail merge feature in Microsoft CRM) lets you choose from a variety of data sources, such as Microsoft Office Access files, HTML files, XML files, and text files. In addition, you can connect directly to a database that supports an OLE DB or ODBC connection. Because SQL Server supports OLE DB connections, you can connect directly to the Microsoft CRM filtered database views and use those records as the data source for your mail merge. To do this, simply create a new data source connection pointing at the SQL Server database that your Microsoft CRM installation uses, and then select the filtered view that you want.

After you select your filtered view, you will probably want to further refine the records included in your mail merge. You can do this by using the advanced filter tools that Word offers.

After you filter the records that you want to include in your mail merge, you can set up and create your letters just as you can with any other Word mail merge. Some of the benefits and restrictions of using this technique include:

You can access all the custom attributes by using the filtered views.

You can access all the Microsoft CRM entities, including any custom entities that you create.

You can use the advanced filter tools in Word to limit the records included in your mail merge.

Microsoft CRM will not automatically create completed Letter activities for each of the records in your mail merge.

You can select records from only one filtered view for each mail merge. For example, you could not include records from the FilteredOpportunity and "FilteredOpportunityProduct" views in the same mail merge file.