How to Write a Cover Letter to Multiple Addresses
If you have a great idea for a cover letter, whether it is for a job, sales communication, or just to send to a group of friends, you can customize many different versions of the same letter to each individual. You can write a cover letter and address it to multiple addresses quickly using Microsoft Word's mail merge feature.
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Instructions
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Open a blank document in Microsoft Word. Click "Mailings" then "Start Mail Merge" on the Word main menu. Choose "Letters" from the list.
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Write the contents of your cover letter as you would normally. Leave a blank space for the address of each recipient. Leave the area next to "Dear" on your greeting line blank also.
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Click "Select Recipients" from your "Mailings" menu. Click "Type New List" if you need to start entering data from scratch or "Use Existing List" if you already have a data file full of your addresses. The data should ideally include a title, first name, last name, street address (two fields in case there is an apartment number), city, state, zip code, country and company name (if applicable).
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Press "Save" to save your new address list to a database or "Open" to open your existing data source. This will link your data, which contains multiple addresses, to your cover letter.
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Position your cursor in the space that you reserved for the recipient's address information.
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Choose "Insert Merge Field" from the "Mailings" menu. You will see all of the fields from your data source listed. Select the title field, then a period, then enter the first name and last name on the first line. Add your two street address fields on the next two lines. Finally, enter the city, state, zip code and country on the final line.
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Position your cursor next to the "Dear" greeting next. Enter your title field, then a period, and finally the last name field. So for example, if the title is "Mrs" and the last name is "Jones" in your database this will display as "Dear Mrs. Jones" when merged.
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Click "Finish and Merge" on the "Mailings" menu. Choose "Edit Individual Documents," which will allow you to merge and display every cover letter for each address on your screen before you print them.
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Tips & Warnings
These instructions are meant for Word 2007 users, but the steps are very similar in older versions of Word. The mail merge options are located under the "Tools" menu in previous versions.
