Patent 8661342 was granted and assigned to Microsoft on February, 2014 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for integrating a customer relationship management application with a mail merge operation on a client-side word processor. Mail merge settings are received from a user, including a record set to use in a mail merge operation. A new mail merge document is created. The record set is added to the mail merge document. A link is added to a template that will control the mail merge operation on a client-side word processor. The linked template gets attached to the new mail merge document when opened on the client-side word processor. Techniques for beginning a mail merge operation on a client-side word processor are described. A downloaded mail merge document is validated. The record set contained in the downloaded mail merge document is separated into one or more separate files. A mail merge wizard is started and advanced to a proper stage.