You may be using Microsoft Excel to organize your mailing list neatly. However, when you’re ready to print mail labels, you’ll need to use mail merge to create them in Word from an Excel list. Here’s how.
Step One: Prepare Your Mailing List
If you have already created a mailing list in Excel, then you can safely skip this test. If you haven’t created a list yet, despite Excel’s lack of a mailmark feature, we still highly recommend using Excel as it’s better for organizing and maintaining your data than using a Word table.
The first thing you need to do is create a column heading that matches the data that goes in each column. Place these headings in the first row of each column.
Which headers you include depends on what information you plan to use in your mail labels. Titles are always good, but it’s important that you know what title a person is getting before creating labels. Also, if your list is for companies and not individuals, you can omit the «First Name» and «Last Name» headings and just use «Company Name» instead. To properly illustrate the steps, in this example we’ll take a personal mailing list. Our list will include the following headings:
- Name
- Surname
- Street address
- city
- condition
- Postcode
This is the standard information you will find on mailing labels. You can even insert images into mail labels if you like, but that step comes later in Word.
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Once you’ve finished creating headers, continue entering data. When you’re done, your list should look something like this:
Save your list and go to Microsoft Word.
Step Two: Customize Labels in Word
Open a blank Word document. Then go to the Newsletters tab and select Start Merge.
Select «Labels» from the drop-down menu.
The Label Options window opens. Here you can select the brand name and product number. Click «OK» when finished.
The outlines of your label will now appear in Word.
Note. If the label outlines aren’t showing, go to Design > Borders and select Show Grid Lines.
Step Three: Connect Your Worksheet to Word Shortcuts
Before you can transfer data from Excel to your labels in Word, you must connect them. Back on the Mailing List tab in your Word document, select the Select Recipients option.
A drop-down menu will appear. Select Use Existing List.
