Edit: Fixed up the unnecessary line breaks that appeared post-publish. 
There are many of you out there who have used mail merge to get data into Word documents in the past (and it continues to be a great way to create mailings), but one of the questions we've been asked a few times already by customers is how to take templates with mail merge fields and convert them into content controls (so you can create templates leveraging the XML support that I've been blogging about). 
Thanks to a co-worker here at Microsoft (Thanks Lethanial!), we've developed some simple VBA code that does this conversion for you – enjoy! 
Private Sub Document_Open()
 If (MsgBox("Convert Mail Merge fields to Content Controls?", vbYesNo, "Convert Mail Merge Fields") = vbYes) Then ConvertMailMergeFields End IfEnd Sub
'** Traverse Mail Merge fields collection and convert each mail merge field into a content control 
'** while preserving its font style and format.
Private Sub ConvertMailMergeFields()
    Dim i As Integer, Count As Integer
    Dim currentFont As Font
    Dim mergeFieldname As String
    Dim field As MailMergeField
    For Each field In ActiveDocument.MailMerge.Fields
 '** Select Mail Merge field to process.
        field.Select
        Set currentFont = Selection.Font '** Set name for content control.
        mergeFieldname = GetMailMergeFieldName(field.Code)
        Debug.Print ("Processing [" & mergeFieldname & "]")
        '** Remove Mail Merge field and replace it with addition of new content control.
        Selection.Cut
 '** Add new content control.
        AddContentControl mergeFieldname, currentFont
        Count = Count + 1 Next Debug.Print ("Number of Mail Merge Fields converted to Content Controls: " & Count)End Sub'** Add new content control.
Private Sub AddContentControl(ByVal mergeFieldname As String,
Windows 7 sale, ByVal currentFont As Font) Dim newControl As ContentControl
 Dim fontStyleName As String Set newControl = ActiveDocument.ContentControls.Add(wdContentContro  lText)
    '** The Title property only allows for 64 characters.
    '** If name is longer, we will put the rest in the Tag property.
    If (Len(mergeFieldname) < 64) Then
        newControl.Title = mergeFieldname
        newControl.Tag = "" 
    Else
 newControl.Title = Mid(mergeFieldname, 1,
Windows 7 Enterprise, 64)
 newControl.Tag = Mid(mergeFieldname, 65, Len(mergeFieldname) - 64) End If newControl.SetPlaceholderText , ,
Microsoft Office 2010 Key, "Click to add." '** Set font for content control.
 fontStyleName = GetFontStyleName(currentFont)
 SetFontStyle newControl,
Windows 7 Home Premium, fontStyleName, currentFont '** Allow carriage return.
    newControl.MultiLine = TrueEnd Sub'** Quick and dirty way to check to see if the given font style exist; if it does not, create it.
Private Sub SetFontStyle(ByRef newControl As ContentControl,
Discount Office 2007, ByVal fontStyleName As String, ByVal currentFont As Font)
    On Error GoTo Error_FontStyleDoesNotExist
    newControl.DefaultTextStyle = fontStyleName
 Exit SubError_FontStyleDoesNotExist: AddNewFontStyle fontStyleName, currentFont
 newControl.DefaultTextStyle = fontStyleNameEnd SubPrivate Sub AddNewFontStyle(ByVal newFontStyleName As String, ByVal currentFont As Font) Dim fontStyle As Style Set fontStyle = ActiveDocument.Styles.Add(newFontStyleName) With currentFont fontStyle.Font.Name = .Name
 fontStyle.Font.Size = .Size
        fontStyle.Font.Bold = .Bold
        fontStyle.Font.Italic = .Italic End WithEnd SubPrivate Function GetFontStyleName(ByVal currentFont As Font) As String Dim fontStyleName As String With currentFont fontStyleName = .Name
 fontStyleName = fontStyleName & .Size
        fontStyleName = fontStyleName & .Bold
        fontStyleName = fontStyleName & .Italic End With '** Return result.
 GetFontStyleName = fontStyleName
End Function
Private Function GetMailMergeFieldName(ByVal fieldCode As String) As String
 Dim mergeFieldname As String: mergeFieldname = "" '** Name of Mail merge field: MERGEFIELD MailMergeFieldName \* MERGEFORMAT
    mergeFieldname = Replace(fieldCode, "MERGEFIELD", "")
    mergeFieldname = Replace(mergeFieldname, "\* MERGEFORMAT", "")
    mergeFieldname = Trim(mergeFieldname) '** Return result.
 GetMailMergeFieldName = mergeFieldnameEnd Function
 
- Tristan
 <div