Acceptance Letters

When you finish entering the camper data into the Camper Information screen, you will want, at some point to notify your Campers that they have been accepted to Scholarship Camp (i.e. the Acceptance Letter) and you will want to tell them some things about camp.

TACO uses MS Word's mail merge utility to produce a custom Acceptance form letter for each of your Campers. 

Note: The camper must have paid some deposit in order for TACO to generate an acceptance letter. If the full camp fee amount is due (i.e. $0.00 has been paid) no letter will be generated.

An overview of the process looks like this:

1. Create the data file: 

From within the Acceptance Letter Station (Print Preports) TACO creates a data file (C:\My Documents\DateMergeFormLetter.doc) containing the names, addresses and other information about each Camper;

2. Edit your letter: 

Open the Acceptance Letter using MS Word and edit it as you desire;

3. Merge the data and the letter: 

Using the MS Word mail merge utility, you combine the campers with the letter to produce a letter for each camper. You can output the letters to an MS Word file or directly to a printer.

I have to admit that MS Word Mail Merge can seem a little complicated. But once you get the hang of it, it makes sense. I implemented the first Acceptance Letter without Mail Merge. I did it all inside TACO. It took me many hours to implement it. But folks wanted more flexibility so I re-implemented with MS Mail Merge. With flexibility comes complexity.

Here are the detailed steps:

1. Create the data file: 

From the Camper Acceptance Letter screen (Main Menu/Print Reports/Camper Tab-Acceptance Letter) click one of the center buttons. The red buttons will send letters to every camper listed on the left side; the blue buttons will send letters to only those you have checked in the check box. TACO will create the data file C:\MyDocuments\DateMergeFormLetter.doc .

A yellow screen will appear with instructions. On the middle left side, there is hyperlink text in the large yellow rectangle. Click on text in the yellow rectangle. This will open and display your Acceptance letter.

Now you are in MS Word.

2. Edit your letter:

Edit your letter as you would like. 

At this point, some of the buttons on the Mail Merge tool bar may not be active (i.e. they will be grayed out and not available - don't worry about it. We will make them active in the next step).

Then save the letter.

3. Merge the data and the letter:

Click on the menu bar Tools / Mail Merge.

You will see a dialogue box with three major functions: Create, Get Data, Merge.

The Create button should have the letter identified: C:\Taco\AcceptanceLetter.doc 

The Get Data button probably has nothing under it. This means Word does not know where the data is. The data is located at C:\My Documents\DateMergeFormLetter.doc

So click on the Get Data button and browse to the data. Then click on it.

Your merge field button should become active as well as any other merge data button that was previously inactive.

To create your letters, you merge the data with the letter. Use the merge button on the toolbar. You can merge to a Word document (recommended) or merge directly to a printer. If your printer is reliable (like a laser printer) you can go directly to the printer. My printer is not reliable so I merge to a Word document and print 10 pages at a time. That way, if something goes haywire, I can reprint from Word.