How to Mail Merge Letters - Office 365
Summary
TLDRIn this tutorial, Kevin explains how to use the mail merge feature in Microsoft Word to create customized letters. He walks through an example where users can personalize Christmas letters or mass communication for companies by inserting specific names, addresses, and other details from an Excel spreadsheet. The guide demonstrates how to utilize templates, select recipients, and automate the process, saving time and making correspondence feel more personal. This step-by-step process simplifies mail merges, making it easy for anyone to send personalized letters efficiently.
Takeaways
- π Mail merge is a feature in Microsoft Word that allows you to create customized letters for multiple recipients.
- π A practical use case for mail merge is sending personalized Christmas letters to friends and family.
- πΌ Mail merge is also useful for businesses, like utility companies, that need to send customized communications to customers.
- π» The tutorial is given by Kevin, a Microsoft employee, using Word from the Office 365 suite, but the process is applicable to older versions as well.
- π The Mail Merge Wizard is introduced as the easiest method to perform a mail merge.
- π The process starts by selecting 'Letter' as the document type and then choosing a template or using a current document.
- π An Excel spreadsheet is used to source the recipient data, including names, addresses, and other personal details.
- π The spreadsheet must have column headers in the first row for the mail merge to correctly identify fields like first name, last name, and address.
- π The tutorial demonstrates how to insert placeholders for recipient names and addresses within the letter template.
- π Mail merge offers options to sort, filter, and validate addresses, enhancing the customization and accuracy of the letters.
- π¨οΈ The final step involves previewing the customized letters and completing the merge to print or save them as individual documents.
Q & A
What is the purpose of using mail merge for letters?
-The purpose of using mail merge for letters is to customize each letter with personal details such as the recipient's name and address, making it seem more personal rather than sending generic messages.
Who might benefit from using mail merge for customized letters?
-People who need to send out customized letters, such as utility companies, businesses, or individuals sending holiday greetings like Christmas letters, can benefit from using mail merge.
What is the minimum version of Microsoft Word required to use mail merge?
-Mail merge has been around for a while, so even older versions of Microsoft Word like 2019, 2016, 2013, or even the latest Office 365 should be able to follow along and use mail merge.
How does the mail merge wizard help in creating customized letters?
-The mail merge wizard guides users through a step-by-step process, allowing them to select a document type, choose a template, select recipients from a list, and insert personalized information into the letter.
What kind of information can be included in a mail merge document from an Excel spreadsheet?
-Information such as first name, last name, address, city, state, and zip code can be included in a mail merge document from an Excel spreadsheet.
How can users ensure that the correct data from their Excel spreadsheet is used in the mail merge?
-Users can ensure correct data usage by selecting the appropriate list from their Excel spreadsheet, confirming that the first row contains column headers, and matching the data fields in Word with the headers in Excel.
What is the advantage of using the 'Address Block' feature in mail merge?
-The 'Address Block' feature automatically formats and inserts the recipient's address into the letter, including the name, which saves time and ensures consistency.
How can users preview their mail merge letters before finalizing them?
-Users can preview their mail merge letters by clicking on 'Preview your letter' in the mail merge wizard, which shows how the letter will look with the current record's data.
What are the options available after completing the mail merge?
-After completing the mail merge, users can either edit individual letters to create a Word document with each letter or print the letters directly.
Can users print a selected number of letters instead of the entire mail merge list?
-Yes, users can choose to print a selected number of letters by specifying the number of records they want to print before clicking the print button.
What is the benefit of using mail merge for sending holiday letters?
-Using mail merge for holiday letters allows individuals to include personalized details and greetings for each recipient, making the letters feel more thoughtful and tailored.
Outlines
π Introduction to Mail Merge
Kevin introduces the concept of mail merge, explaining its utility for personalizing letters, particularly for occasions like Christmas. He shares his professional affiliation with Microsoft and proceeds to demonstrate how to use mail merge in Word with Office 365. The process starts with opening a blank document and navigating to the Mailings tab to initiate the mail merge wizard. Kevin opts for a step-by-step approach, selecting the letter option and starting the process. He then chooses a template for the letter from the available options.
π Setting Up Mail Merge with Recipients
Kevin details the next steps in setting up mail merge, which involve selecting recipients from an Excel spreadsheet containing names, addresses, and other relevant information. He emphasizes the efficiency of using a list to avoid manually typing each recipient's details. The video then shows how to link the spreadsheet to the mail merge document, ensuring that the first row contains column headers for proper data mapping. Kevin also mentions the ability to sort, filter, and validate addresses within the mail merge tool.
π Customizing the Letter
The tutorial continues with Kevin writing the letter, starting with inserting the date and his address. He then demonstrates how to insert the recipient's name and address into the letter using placeholders from the spreadsheet. Kevin shows how to add a personalized salutation by inserting the recipient's first name and provides a walkthrough of customizing the entire letter template with dynamic content from the spreadsheet.
π Previewing and Completing the Merge
Kevin previews the customized letter, showing how the mail merge feature updates the recipient's name and address automatically. He explains the option to preview each letter individually and how the tool makes it easy to ensure each letter is personalized correctly. The video concludes with Kevin completing the merge process, demonstrating the option to either edit individual letters or print them all at once. He chooses to print a PDF as an example, showing the final customized letters for two recipients.
Mindmap
Keywords
π‘Mail Merge
π‘Personalization
π‘Excel Spreadsheet
π‘Template
π‘Recipients
π‘Column Headers
π‘Merge Wizard
π‘Salutation
π‘Preview
π‘Complete the Merge
Highlights
Kevin introduces the concept of using mail merge for customized letters.
Explains the personalization benefits of mail merge for holiday greetings.
Mentions the utility of mail merge for businesses like utility companies.
Kevin discloses his employment at Microsoft.
Demonstrates starting a mail merge in Word using the Mailings tab.
Guides through selecting the 'Start Mail Merge' option.
Chooses the 'Letter' document type for the mail merge.
Selects a template for the mail merge letter.
Shows how to link an Excel spreadsheet as the mail merge data source.
Details the process of selecting recipients from an Excel list.
Discusses the ability to sort and filter the mail merge recipient list.
Inserts the current date into the letter template.
Enters the sender's address into the letter.
Inserts recipient names from the Excel spreadsheet into the letter.
Uses the 'Address Block' feature to insert recipient addresses.
Customizes the salutation with the recipient's name.
Previews the mail merge letter to see how it looks with personalized data.
Completes the mail merge process by printing or saving as a PDF.
Demonstrates saving the merged letters as a PDF.
Shows the final customized letters in the PDF.
Encourages viewers to like, subscribe, and comment for more content.
Transcripts
hi everyone my name is kevin today i
want to show you how you could use mail
merge to customize letters
why would you possibly want to use mail
merge with letters and what does that
even mean well imagine that christmas is
coming up and you want to send all of
your friends and family a letter well
what you'd probably want to do is you
want to customize the greeting you
probably want to use their first name in
the letter
uh just to make it seem more personal
otherwise your family might say hey like
who's this person just sending me a
generic message you can use it in many
other examples as well christmas letters
is just one example let's say that
you're a utility company or let's say
that you're anyone else who wants to
send out customized letters mail merge
enables you to do that
and now as full disclosure before we
jump into this i work at microsoft as a
full-time employee so why don't we jump
to it and i'll show you how you could do
a mail merge
here i am on my pc and i'm going to be
using word that comes with office 365 so
this is the latest and greatest but even
if you have an older version let's say
2019 2016 2013 any other version mail
merge has been around for a while and
you should be able to follow along what
i did is i just clicked into a blank
document and where we want to go
is the mailings pivot so i'm going to go
ahead and click on mailings up on top
here
and what we want to do is the one that
sounds most promising is start mail
merge so let's get started here and what
i want to use is the step-by-step mail
merge wizard that's by far the easiest
way to do a merge so let's go ahead and
click on that
and today what i want to do what type of
document are you working on well we're
working on a letter so i'm going to go
ahead and click on letter
and then we're going to click on
start let's go ahead
and i'm going to actually select from a
template now let's say that you were
writing a letter you could just go ahead
and click on this use current document
or you could even just select from an
existing document but in this case i
don't have one so i'm just going to
select a template
and let's click on the letters tab and
i'm just going to go with a let's go
with let's say this one this looks like
a good template
and so there it is it inserted this
template into the document and now let's
select the recipients now what i've done
ahead of time is i have this excel
spreadsheet and i have all these names
so i have first name last name i have
their address the city the state and the
zip code so i have all this information
in an excel sheet and there are a lot of
people in this excel sheet
so i don't want to have to go through
letter by letter and have to type in
each name that would be a pretty big
burden to have to do that so i'm glad i
have this list and i can customize my
letter based on this information in this
sheet so i'm gonna go ahead and minimize
excel and let me go through now and
let's just see here it says
so i have the option of using an
existing list why i have an existing
list in the excel sheet i could also
select from outlook contacts or i could
type in a new list but in this case i
already have a list
and i'm going to go just browse and
select the list that i just showed you
so here's my list and we're going to
select that it says sheet1 that's what i
have here that's sheet1
and the other thing is it says first row
of data contains column headers well if
i look in my excel sheet and i go to the
top
of the sheet these are my column headers
here so i have column headers that looks
good and i'm going to go ahead and click
on ok
and so what it does now is it shows me
all of the mail merge recipients so this
matches what i had in my excel sheet and
what's kind of nice is i could go
through now i could sort the list i
could even filter the list you know
maybe i only want to send to let's say
my family who lives in new jersey
and then i could even say and maybe
specifically in this city
but i don't want to do that for now but
you do have the ability to filter and
you also have the ability to sort your
list
and you could also find individual
recipients you can validate your
addresses so quite a bit of rich
functionality of what you can do here
but in this case i want to send it to
everyone so let's just click on ok
so next i'm going to go ahead and write
the letter so let's go on to step four
of the process
and it says now write your letter okay
so let me insert the date here today's
october 6th
and then here it wants me to enter my
company name and my company address i'm
not going to have a company name
but i'll just type in my address so
12132 main street
and we'll say i'm in redmond washington
the home to microsoft
and then now it says type the recipient
name so what i want to do is the i have
the recipient name in my spreadsheet how
do i get it into here well here i can
add information and so what's kind of
neat is um if i click on more items down
here i'll go ahead and click that now i
could insert items from my excel
spreadsheet and so all of these fields
are based on my headers in excel
remember i have first name last name
street address so on and so forth and so
here i'll start with maybe the first
name
and then i'll put in the last name okay
so let's go ahead and close that for now
and i want to make sure i insert a space
between these so you'll see this is a
placeholder for the first name and this
is a placeholder for the last name now
it says type the recipient address and
i'm going to go ahead and click on
address block
and it actually looks like it includes a
name in there as well so i could have
just done this instead of inserting the
name on my own so i'm going to go ahead
and let's just click on ok
and then i'll just remove the first name
and last name so i just have my address
block there and so it says type the
salutation so maybe i'll say dear and
then what i could do is i could go back
to this more items and i can insert the
first name
and then i'll put in a comma after the
first name then i have all my text body
and then i'll have my closing and maybe
i say regards
and i'll just remove these two down here
for now
and so what i could do now is
i've customized the letter you know i
have the person's name in there i have
the person's address in there and so now
let's go ahead and click on preview your
letter so let me go ahead and click on
that
and so here you know i have my you see
my information and here's bob jones and
i could also click on this to preview
the results right up here
and what i could do is if i click on
this little arrow that'll bring me to
the next record so basically the next
row in my excel spreadsheet so i'll
click on that and so you'll see how the
address updates to the individual who
you know the row is on and you'll see
that it inserts their name right up in
there and so i could go through all my
records and let's see how it looks so
this is great it's customized my letter
to each individual i don't have to go
through one by one and insert the
address or insert the name it basically
does it for me
but this looks fantastic and
now i'm going to click on complete the
merge
and so by completing the merge what that
what that allows me to do is i could
either edit individual letters so
that'll just give me a word document
with each individual letter or what i
could do is i could click on print and
by clicking on print this will simply
print out all 50 something letters that
i have so i'll go ahead and let's click
on the print button
and i could print everything or i could
only print you know a certain number of
records so just for this example i'm
going to print just let's say
two of them just just to do an example
i'm going to click on ok and i'm just
going to print a pdf just to demonstrate
how this works but you could also select
your printer on there and then print all
the letters i'm going to go ahead and
click on ok
and now i have to choose what i want to
save it as so i'm just going to say test
and so what it did now is it it printed
them out so let's go ahead and i'll
click into this pdf that i just printed
and what you'll see is here's my the
first letter that's customized to bob
and if i scroll down farther now i see
my second letter customized for rosamond
but that's that's really how easy it is
to do a mail merge to be able to
customize letters it's super easy if
you're using word if you're using excel
that has your list of contacts you can
customize your letter and keep in mind
it's not just limited to names or
addresses you could put all sorts of
other information in your excel
spreadsheet so thinking back to the
example of maybe a let's say a christmas
letter that you want to send out maybe
you include the person's kids name so
you could ask the question how is you
know samantha and nancy how are they
doing and so you could make it seem like
you really customized the letter uh
fully for each individual who you're
sending to it
sending that letter to and your family
will probably be really impressed
they'll think wow how do you have so
much time to write these customized
letters
anyway hopefully you enjoyed it if you
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well that's all i have for you today
hope you enjoyed see you next time bye
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