How to Use Mail Merge in Microsoft Word - Step By Step (Part 1)

I am going to teach you in a very simple and clear way how to use the MailMerge feature in Microsoft Word.

What is Mail Merge?
Mail Merge is a feature in Microsoft Office that allows you to automatically generate several similar documents using a list of related data.
What this means is that, you could create several envelopes or letters using list of address stored in a spreadsheet. So if you have a list of 1000 employees and the same document needs to be sent to all of them, then the only thing that needs to be changing is the name and address. For this, you can create a single document and then use mail merge to generated the rest, each having a different address based on data in excel sheet.
Let’s demonstrate it, so you can follow the steps below

Step 1: Create and excel file with list of names and addresses as shown below:

Step 2: Save the File in the Documents Folder. Give it a name Addresses

Step 3: Open Microsoft Word and type a letter like below:

The address section and name is what we want to generate using the excel file we saved. So we are going to replace this fields using the name and addressed in the excel sheet. So move on to step 4.

Step 4: Delete the name and address placeholders

Step 5: In the ribbon in Microsoft Word, Click on Mailing tab

Step 6: Click on Start Mail Merge

Step 7: Click on Letters

Step 8: Click on Select recipients and Select <Use Existing List>

Step 9: The Select Data Source dialog box opens. Browse to select the Excel file you created in Step 1. After you select it, click on Open. The dialog box closes

Now you need to insert data from the excel file into your document.

Step 10: Delete the <Name> placeholder following the word Dear. Place your cursor in that position.

Step 11: In the ribbon, still on the Mailing tab, click on “Insert Merge Field” and choose Name. You can see that <<Name>> appears in the position of Name

Let’s now preview the document to see what we have achieved.

Step 12: Click on “Preview Results” as shown in the picture and observe the result. You will notice that the placeholder is replaced by actual name. Use the navigation buttons close to the Preview button to move back and forth.

If you can see the names changing, then at this point you have completed Part 1 lesson on Mail Merge

Continue to Part 2: Inserting and Formatting Addresses in Mail Merge