Mail Merging 1

Mail Merging

Ashlee Vanderwal

IT 206

October 15, 2010

Benjamin Perez
 Mail Merging 2

Mail Merging

From the article, I learned that 4TOPS is in theory, a mini-version of office with-

in office. That is the best way I could think of explaining it to someone who is not familiar with

Office and its’ applications. For those more understanding of the program, it is a ‘plug-in’ or

‘extension’ designed to amplify the productivity of administrative tasks such as creating reports.

Its function being to save time and increase productivity. One of the nice features about 4TOPS

is it works throughout various Microsoft applications, such as Access, Excel, and Word as well

as other databases including ODBC and SQL-servers with the main function of assisting in

several tasks but mainly importing and exporting. In addition, another helpful function would be

the Excel Comparison feature. Sometimes a user will save the same file twice, but two different

names, making it hard to figure that which is the most up-to-date. Therefore, I could see that

function coming in handy.

However, the downside about these ‘plug-ins’ or ‘extensions,’ is that they are not

Microsoft developed, meaning Microsoft cannot help with troubleshooting if there are any

problems. I think that because of that fact support would not know the design or function of the

tool unless popular. Whether it corrupts the data or the program is a risk that the user is willing to

take. In addition, if the add-on is from an unreliable source, it may contain malware or viruses.