Merge contact lists and email with mail merge

[DiHo]

Our company is planning to send a mass email with some corporate information.
I need to know how to do several things, and I'd appreciate any help.
First...
There are two different divisions of the company, each of which will send
out the same email. There are some people who will be on both email lists,
and we don't want them to receive two identical emails. So, I'd like to know
if there's a way to merge the two contact "groups", and then delete
duplicates. From what I've read here, it sounds like the best way to create
each of these "groups" is by categorizing the contacts first (rather than use
a distribution list). So, in essence, I suppose I will want to merge a
category of contacts from my computer with a category of contacts from
someone else's computer.

Secondly...
Once I have the final group of contacts ready, what is the process for
sending an email to each of them? I've tried a small test with mail merge
from Word, but it doesn't allow me to select a specific "category" of
contacts from Outlook. Then I tried to do it from Outlook, but hit a wall.
After filling out the "Mail Merge Contacts" dialog box and hitting OK, it
opens up Word with a blank document. Where do I go from there, or am I going
about this incorrectly from the start?

Thanks for any help!

 

[Russ Valentine [MVP-Outlook]]

There are countless resources that tell you how to do a mail merge,
including the Help Files. If you want to merge to a Category start the merge
from Outlook, select the Category first, then merge to the selected
Contacts.
Here's a good place to start your reading:
http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm