In this letter, the word “First” has been enabled as an Address Book field, and will be replaced by the recipient’s first name when you perform the mail merge.

I’ve been using AppleWorks’ integrated database module to create mail-merge documents. Can I create mail-merge documents in Pages, even though there isn’t a database module in iWork ’08?

Yes, you can easily create a mail-merge document in Pages, but your data source is drawn from your Address Book instead of iWork. From within your Pages document, bring up the Inspector, click the Link panel, and then click the Merge tab. From there, you can enable any selected word in your document as an Address Book field, which means that when you go to merge your data later, that selected word will be replaced with data from your Address Book instead. Choose the Address Book field that you want to use, and be sure to select Recipient Field instead of Sender Field. Otherwise, you’ll be merging your own personal information.

When you’re done typing your document, go to Edit > Merge Address Book Cards, and Pages will ask you which Address Book Group you want to merge with. Alternatively, you can drag and drop selected contacts from Address Book directly into your Pages document to trigger the merge as well.

Once you know how to do this, you’ll recognize that many of Pages’ built-in templates (such as letters, envelopes, and forms) already have Address Book fields embedded in them. If you like how those templates have been set up for you, you can jump right ahead to performing the mail merge without having to set up any fields yourself.