Mail Merge: Custom Attachments, Subjects, BCC/CC (Word, Excel, Outlook)

hi I'm Jamie and welcome to teachers  Tech today I want to show you how to   perform a mail merge with custom attachments  we're going to start from a Microsoft Excel   file connect it to word and then it will  get sent out through your outlook to each   individual person you have on your list  we're going to go through this step by step here's the scenario that I'm working with  today so for this example I have a bunch of PDFs   we're going to say that these are student fees  that are due I need to send this in an email I   need the email message customized to each person  and then each of these individual PDFs sent and   attached to the correct person I also have a PDF  at the bottom that's a general one that I want   everybody to get so we're going to be adding two  different attachments one specific to the person   that gets emailed and one General one and through  mail merge I can do this so let's show you what I   need to do first here's the Excel file that I'm  I'm going to be demoing how to do the attachment   with mail merge today let's do a quick scan of  this uh simply I have a first name last name   everybody's email here they're all customized the  individual person and this is really important the   attachment path so this path will lead to the  specific in my case is a PDF but it could be   any file that you're attaching but mine is a PDF  the location where it is and I'll show you where   that so you can copy paste this path rate and  it will be really quick we also have our   due date and our account number so I'm going to  go and open up this file that I have this folder   right here and this shows me all the different  PDFs that I want to be attaching to the correct   email with the correct message so if I go to this  top one I just right click on it I can copy as a   path and then I can go back to my spreadsheet and  I can go contrl V and paste it in so that way I'll   know that there's no errors uh on the path and  I can go to each of those and quick Qui LLY just   run down the list on it so this is how you should  set up your Excel spreadsheet if you're not after   attachments I have a different video about how to  just do a common mail merge with sending messages   and I'll put a link to that up above in the card  and you can take a look at that one instead but   so the next step here we actually have to do an  add-on and that is through this right here so   this is merge tools and this has been around for a  while now and I'll put the link Down Below in the   description and I'm going to walk through how to  install this so just go ahead and click download   and then download and then I'll show you how to  go ahead and put this in let's open up our file   explorer here and I need to go to downloads and  this is the what I just downloaded right here this   ZIP file I'm just going to rightclick extract all  and I'll just hit extract and now inside of this   uh folder that I just extracted you see all these  different PDFs what are the howto but I'm going to   walk you through that what we need is this file  right here this merge tools so what I'm going   to do actually is copy this so I could select it  to go contrl C or you can right click on it and   do the copy this way so now that that's copied  let's open up Microsoft Word so I'm working up   uh opening up my Microsoft Word I need to start a  blank document and then I need to go to file back   down at the very bottom to options when the word  options open up go to Advanced and on the side   just pull down till we get to general which is  towards the bottom here right here uh so notice   that under generally have file locations if this  is grade out you don't have a blank file or a file   open and it will be great out if you just went  to options first but I'm going to click on file   location here is where I need to place this file  so start up and then here's the path if I click   on it and hit modify it opens up so this is the  path right here I can actually click in this area   right here and if I go control V it doesn't look  like anything up pasted in but that file that I   did copy before is in here and I'll show you what  I mean so if I just click up here so this is the   path if I go contrl C and let's just leave this  now I'm just going to hit okay and open up another   file explorer here and I'll put the path in  that I just copied and I'll put uh and hit enter   so notice that merge tools is in there uh just  even though it didn't look like it I can go to   this what I just showed you I could have pasted it  in here as well so now that I have that in I need   to close my Microsoft Word and then when I reopen  it the next time it's going to be ready to go and   it will be able to do those attachments so now the  next step we're going to go and write our email   and make sure it customizes to each individual  name and then those attachments are in it as

well I'm going to go ahead and create a blank  document here and I just want to point out if   we look across the tabs at the top we have merge  tools now when we added that file when we copied   paste that into the startup it gave us all of this  and this is what how we're going to be able to add   those attachments but before we do that let's go  over to mailings and this is very similar to what   we did in the other tutorial that I was talking  about earlier but we need to make sure we connect   our Microsoft Excel file to this Microsoft Word  fi file that we're working on so let's go ahead   first and go uh select recipients here and we're  going to use an existing list which is the Excel   file and I'm going to go and have that on my  desktop and I have a folder called Excel and   we have mail merge right here so I'm going to go  and hit open there's only one sheet on here and I   do have uh we have column headers on it across  the top so I'm going to hit okay now the other   thing just to check off here that we're working  on letters so this add-on works with the letters   uh if I click something else notice how it changes  but we want to make sure we're on letters here so   now we're ready to start writing our email inside  this word document now I went ahead and just wrote   an email here that I want sent out but I need some  customization to this and this is where I need to   insert the merge Fields that's connected to my  Excel file so up here where it says Dear person   I don't want it to say dear person I I'm going  to get rid of this person right here I'm going   to just highlight it you could delete it and do  this as well but I'm just going to highlight it   and these are the different colums from my Excel  spreadsheet so let's say it's just going to be   first name so when I click first name it adds  this right here so as I go through there's a   couple different things that I want to be able  to connect to that Excel file to certain columns   this one right here so feeser due bu and this is  due date I'm just going to highlight this and then   go insert and then there's a due date here so it  inserts the due date I said that you know please   attach invoices and newsletters here and the other  thing is uh I mentioned when you call about your   account issues please mention your account number  so I want to insert the their account number in   the email so they can find that easily if I go up  to account number here it is right there so now   if I go through I can check to see what this looks  like I can do a little preview so if I click click   preview here it says Ashton here's the due date  here and there's the account number and as I go   through the different ones if I go back and I'll  just see click these arrows you can look how the   name changes and then the due dates are all the  same but they could have been different and that   would change as well but I can see the account  number and the names are changing on this now if   it wasn't for uh the attachments I could just  finish and merge this way but we want to make   sure that we save this up now so I'm just going  to go file and save as and I'm going to go and   put it into that same folder that I had on my  desktop here with my mail merge here and I'll   just call this uh I'll just call this mail merge  just like that and I'll hit save let's move over   to merge tools now and we're going to look at this  right here merge with attachments you can see the   description what it will do for you I'm just going  to go ahead and click on this and we're going to   get greeted with this right at this where we can  make our customization so what do I need to add to   here so select the merge fields that contain the  path and file name attachments so remember we have   this as a column header here attachment path I'm  going to hit add so this makes the customization   of each file when we send it uh that each person's  going to get a different PDF in this case but you   could use things like a word file or other files  as well this down here if you want to uh have a   uh common PDF which we're going to send out the  newsletter we're going to add it right here so   browse for attachments to be included in all  messages so maybe it's a picture that you put   in or something but if I go uh just to my desktop  here uh and then I have it on under my mail merge   attachments and it's going to be this monthly  newsletter I'm going to hit okay so now I have my   individual PDF file and I also have the same one  getting sent out to everyone let's continue on and   we want to pick our merge destination if I drop  down we want to use this first one merge to email   message so I'm just going to click on this and  then we have all these different options that we   can apply so select the field containing the email  address this is going to connect to that Excel   document and that column is going to be right here  this email do we want to CC or BC see well I don't   have any connections in that one where there's  none uh that I have but if you did have it set up   you could add those as well this is the account  that it's going to be sending from so send Using

account if I drop down you would see the different  accounts so it's a nice option to have if I want   to pick from sending from a different account so  if you have multiple accounts you pick which one   you want to send it from you could send on behalf  uh and just putting the information in right there   reply to an address this information and then  we can also These are nice to have so request   delivery receipt making sure the person has it  request read receipt so maybe it's an invoice   you want to be notified that the person actually  did open it and read this and data source contains   a subject field so if I wanted to choose this uh  maybe I'll click this right here and I'm going to   say the subject field is going to be the due date  and if I write a message I'll say please uh pay   fees buy and it's going to be due date and maybe I  add a space on this side I can say something like   I'll say thank you just like that now at the very  bottom we have a few more options do we want to   save to drafts merge tool finders defer sending or  send now so if you're already you can go ahead and   click Send now and that's what I'm going to choose  and I'm going to hit continue merge records all 1   to 10 so I have 10 different ones and I'm going to  hit okay this is just kind of a since we're using   this tool by uh Doug Robbins is just coming up  where you can make a donation to this but we get   this uh just to let them know that we're using the  trial version of it and that we have a total of 20   times so I'm just going to go ahead and uh click  here to close and we can see it processing through   all these records here we are taking a look at the  finished result I just open up Microsoft Outlook   and just to point out I'm in the original Outlook  not in the new outlook because this won't work the   new outlook without supporting the automation  I have the two PD DF attachments the one custom   and the general one here the message is in here  I noticed it said dear Alex I think I put Alex   in on the Excel file so that's why it said that  we have the due date here that should be correct   and we have the account number that it pulled from  so it looks like everything is correct beside that   typo that I made with the name so I hope you like  learning how to send these custom attachments with   mail merge here today let me know if it works or  doesn't work with you down in the comments thanks   for watching this time on teachers Tech I'll see  you next time with more Tech tips and tutorials