Technology How To

With the combination of Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, the mail merge tool is an easy way to make a universal document that is personalized individually for a large list of people. The two most common uses of mail merge are in letters and labels. The following document shows the basic steps to complete a full mail merge for labels.
First, create a list of people whose information is to be included on the mailing labels. The spreadsheet can be created within Microsoft Excel 2007 and can include any information needed such as addresses, phone numbers, etc. Here is a sample spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel 2007:

It is very important to have field titles such as “last name, address, city, etc.” because these field names will be needed later in the mail merge. Be sure to break down fields to their smallest piece of data, for example, instead of using “name,” use “first name” and “last name.”

Save this spreadsheet in order to retrieve it through Microsoft Word later.

To begin the mail merge, open up Microsoft Word 2007 and click on the Mailings Tab located at the top of the Microsoft Word ribbon. From here, click on the Start Mail Merge option and scroll down to Labels.

From here, the Label Options screen will appear. This screen gives a large list of labels to choose from with many different brands and model numbers. The standardized label is an Avery US Letter 5260. If needed, a description of each label is given when selected in the Label Options screen.

A blank document full of blank labels will now appear on the screen. Before inserting the mail merge fields, select the spreadsheet that is to be used for the mail merge.
Click on the Mailings tab in the Microsoft Word ribbon. Then click on the Select Recipients option, and scroll down to Use Existing List. Search through the hard drive for the desired Excel spreadsheet.

Once the correct spreadsheet is selected, the “Select Table” box will appear. Highlight the sheet(s) necessary for the mail merge and click OK.

Now all labels should have Next Record in their available space except the first label in the top left corner of your screen. The Next Record placed in all of the other labels is extremely important, because it represents all of the names on your spreadsheet. DO NOT DELETE THE Next Record MERGE FIELD!

In the blank label, insert the Merge Fields. Go to the Mailings tab and click on the Insert Merge Field option. A list of all the title fields in your spreadsheet will appear. Insert each merge field in a preferred location, making sure to add any necessary spaces or punctuation between the fields. A sample label is shown below:

Now that the format has been set up for one label, all labels can be updated by clicking on the Update Labels option located in the Mailings tab.

Once the labels are updated, the screen should look like this:

Preview the labels by clicking on the Preview Results Option. All of the information from the spreadsheet should now be included within the labels.

A sample preview is shown below:

The mail merge is finally ready for completion. Simply click on the Finish & Merge option on the top right section of the Mailings tab and scroll down to Edit Individual Documents. This will put the labels in a separate document. Save and Print this document.