Creating the data source

Although you can create and print mailing labels and envelopes without using a data source, in most cases using a data source is the most expedient approach. This chapter assumes that you are using a data source.

A data source is a file, spreadsheet or database, which contains the list of names and addresses the letter is to be sent to.

For this example, we will use the following column headers: First name, Last name, Address 1, Address 2, Town/City, State/County, Country, Postal Code, Gender, Points. A sample data source is shown in Figure 262.

OOo can access a wide variety of data sources, including spreadsheets, text files and databases such as MySQL, Adabas, and ODBC.If the information to be used in the mail merge is currently in a format that OOo can not access directly, you need to convert it, for example by exporting it to a comma-separated file.