To Do a Mail Merge Using an Excel Spreadsheet

CRSD Professional Development – author:Tony Judice

To do a Mail Merge using an Excel spreadsheet –

Create the spreadsheet with the desired information, such as an address list. Make sure that you use the first row of the spreadsheet as a header row. Excel needs to identify each column by category.

Rename sheet 1 at the bottom the page so that it will be easily identifiable. Save the spreadsheet and close it.

Open Microsoft Word.

Go to Tools_Letters and Mailings_Mail Merge.

This will open the Mail Merge task pane on the right side of the screen.

In the Mail Merge task pane you have a choice of types of documents. The steps are at the bottom of the pane in hyperlink blue. To write a form letter from scratch, leave the radio button in front of Letters and choose Starting Document at the bottom of the pane.

Word will open the Excel file in the dialog box and list the sheets on the file. If you renamed the sheet it will be listed. If you did not, it will list the sheets in order. The first file will be listed as sheet 1. Select the sheet and click OK.

The address list will appear in the dialog box. If it is the correct list, click OK.

Choose “Write your letter” at the bottom of the task pane.

Use a logical progression when typing the letter. Instead of typing the address on the letter, go to the spot where you would normally type the street address, click “more items” and choose street address from the list, click Insert and then Close. It will insert a marker to link the letter to the Street Address field in Excel. Use the space bar and Enter to manually set up the letter as you type and insert fields. For example, you would insert Street Address and then hit Enter to go to the next line. InsertCity, close the card and then type a comma and space. Go back to more items and insert State. Close the card, hit space bar and then go back to more items to insert the zip code. The following illustration is a completed address.

At any time you can go to the bottom of the task pane and “Preview your letters”. On that screen you can come back to the previous screen and continue working on the letter. When you finish and you have previewed the letters, you can Complete the Merge at the bottom of the task pane. When you do the task pane will have two choices in the middle: print and edit individual letters. Choose Edit individual letters and click OK. It will create the letters. These are the completed letters. Save this file and give it a name that will indicate that it is the finished product. Close the file – do not close Word. When you close the completed file the mail merge will still be on screen behind it. Save this file so that you will remember that it is the mail merge. If you open this file, you will be able to use the Mail Merge task pane to go back to the step where you chose the Excel file and you can choose a different file. You can then use that file to create more letters. You will have to make sure the column headings in the Excel files are the same.