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.

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 letters.
First, create a list of people who are to receive the letter. The spreadsheet can be created within Microsoft Excel 2007 and can include other information such as addresses, phone numbers, etc. However, for a letter mail merge, only the name fields are needed. 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 fields 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 the list through Microsoft Word later.
Now that the spreadsheet is complete, open up Microsoft Word and create the letter that is to be sent to all of the people on the list. Leave the space after “Dear…” blank in order to leave room for the mail merge name fields.

When the letter is complete, access the mail merge options by selecting the Mailings tab on the Microsoft Word ribbon. Begin the mail merge by clicking on the Select Recipients option, and scrolling down to Use Existing List. Search through the hard drive for the already existing 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.

When complete, the name merge fields can be inserted. These will be placed directly after your greeting (i.e. dear , ) Click on the space located directly to the right of the greeting and then click on the Insert Merge Field option located in the Mailings tab.

You will notice that all of the title fields are included in this tab. However, for this letter, only the first and last name title fields are necessary for use.
Click on the First_Name title field; click the spacebar, then insert the Last_Name title field; insert a comma and the greeting should now look like this:

To check to see if the name merge fields were successfully inserted, click on the Preview Results button and scroll through the names using the arrow toggles in the Preview Results tab. Both options are highlighted in the image below.

Now, the names of the people on the list should have replaced the and fields within the letter as shown on the right. The names will change accordingly to the next person on the list when using the toggle arrows.

To complete the mail merging process, simply click on the Finish & Merge button and scroll down to Edit Individual Documents.

Select “All” when asked what records to merge. This will place the personalized letters in one document with each page addressing a different person on the chosen spreadsheet. Save and Print this document to complete the letter mail merge.