Mail Merge Made Easy: From Excel to Word to Outlook

hi I'm Jamie and welcome to teachers Tech today  I want to show you how to perform a mail merge   from data that you collect in Microsoft Excel to a  letter in Microsoft Word where you can merge them   together with that information this is going  to save you a tremendous amount of time when   you're done hit print and get them all printed  at once or hit email and it will send it through   Outlook to all the people these are the practice  files that I'm going to be using here today to   perform my mail merge I have a Microsoft Excel  workbook with just a little bit of information   with 10 entries and I have this Microsoft Word  letter that I already wrote and if you want to   follow along with this tutorial here today just  look down below in the description and you can   download these exact same files so a mail merge  what I want to have happen here is if I look at

this Microsoft Excel document let's say you've  collected information in this case I have 10   different names that I've collected with their  addresses and emails here and I have a letter   that I went through and wrote now I want to be  able to either th print this letter out to give it   to somebody or I want to just automatically send  it out in an email but I don't want to go through   each time and having to put Alex Smith over here  and then the address copying it over that way   mail merge automatically happens in Microsoft Word  where it can pull from an Excel file and where I   choose to set up the different places it can pull  the information uh quickly from here and replace   it and you don't really have to do that much and  then you can hit print on everything so it'll just   print out all the P all the different pages you  need or you can send it directly to your outlook   that will email out so these are the things that  I want to show you how to do today I just want

to point out if you're creating your own Excel  spreadsheet make sure in that first row across   the top that you go and put some headers across it  just makes it easier when you're pulling that into   Microsoft Word other things you can think about  is do you need first name last name separated or   do you want them the own their own column how do  you want the add addresses but this is going to   be based on your own preference I'm going to go  close out of this now and I'm back into Microsoft   Word into our letter which we want to have this  information right through here replaced so to do   this if we look up to the tabs all we need to go  is to mailings over here I want to point out that

I'm using Microsoft 365 so I have the most updated  Word and Excel but this has been very similar for   a long time with whatever version of Microsoft  Word uh that you've been using now the first   step what we want to be able to do is connect to  that Excel list that we have and that's going to   be right through here so if we look in the ribbon  where it says start mail merge I'm going to just   click at this point and I get some options  so you could start it from scratch right from   here you could go type a new list so I could go  through enter names and go through and enter that   information in but that would take some time and  I want to be as quick as possible especially if I   already have that uh in an Excel uh workbook like  I do and we can also go from our Outlook contacts   so if you had a bunch uh in your Outlook contacts  they could go uh go and grab that information and   pull it so that might be a good option if you have  that information in Outlook but we're going to go   and use an existing list this is where I need to  go find where I have it so I have a folder just on   my desktop and I have it going to it's going to be  in mail merge and this is where I keep my letter   but I also have the Excel document right here so  I'm going to go ahead and open this now and this   is the sheet it's only the one sheet on it and I  didn't name it anything special uh but take a look   at this I have this checked the first row of data  contains column headers so make sure with this one   you have that selected so now I'm just going to  go ahead and hit okay so notice now ever since

I clicked that and brought those in I have more  options on my ribbon and let's take a look at this   right here so I can now edit the recipient list  so if I go ahead and click on this uh I'm going to   just expand this a bit so you can see it more look  at the options that we have in here and I know I   only have uh 10 list so it's not very large but  if I wanted to take people off the list to send   to or print a document to I can just uncheck them  like this uh you can also break it down by sorting   so the there's arrows right up here where you can  go sort ascending or descending but what I like is   you could also filter so the filter allows you to  add different fields that you wanted to uh filter   by let's say if you wanted to look at a specific  State you could go and find uh that state and if   there's multiple people for there then it would  only be either being printing for that or sending   the email to those ones so you can break it down  and find uh create the ones that exactly what you   need it for uh you can go find the recipient or  you can even validate the addresses down here here   but take advantage of making sure you get the  right people that you know that you're working   with I'm just going to hit okay here let's start  right up here in the address the name and the

address line now when I wrote this in Microsoft  Word I didn't actually need to have any of this I   could delete it right now if I wanted to and I'll  do this a few different ways to show you that how   you can work with inserting different fields now  a quick way you could do it is if you did write it   out like I did you could go through spot by spot  and go up to insert merge and these are all the   fields from that Excel document so those are the  headers that I created so if I click on first name   now I've just replaced that with the actual spot  that will get replaced with the document so I can   go last name so I could go through each of these  and highlight them and I know it's going to get   replaced as I do that so that's one way you could  do this so you could do this anywhere in the   document so let's say in an Excel spreadsheet it  had their last purchase in there then you could be   starting your letter well I've noticed you bought  this and you could have last purchase and it would   be different for whatever that person bought now a  different way we could do this and this will be a   little quicker is I'm going to just delete this  here and let's say we never even put that first   bit in we can just go to the address block so  if I click the address block now it shows me a   preview and this is what I like here it shows me  kind of what the preview will look like uh this   is probably the one we want first name last name  on it but if I click on different ones you can see   how it would change uh based on different things  so but I want the first name last name like that   now I do want to point out uh you can over on the  side you can kind of scroll through and see the   preview of each of the 10 entries that I do have  so you can go through and take a look what they   look like if you ever have different problems  this is working out for me but if you let's say   maybe uh something was missing a street address or  something sometimes there's mistakes you can go to   correct problems here and through match Fields  where you might have to go through and pick uh   where it's not maybe it didn't match correctly  through the Excel document and then I could drop   down and match it here so just to say if something  didn't come out uh you can do that so but this   is working for me I'm going to go and just hit  okay now and we have this address lock so this   is a very quick way to do the address let's move  down to the greeting line right here now we can   do the same thing that I showed you before I could  highlight I could delete this all if I want go up   put first name and this would work it would just  change for whatever person when I go and print it   out or email it out it would adapt it would match  the address block as well but I prefer actually to   go to the greeting line here and I'm going to show  you why so if I just delete all that line and I'm   going to put it back here I'll click on greeting  line we have a few different options so we have   greeting line format we could say two or deer I'll  leave it at Deer uh how formal do you want it to   be uh take a look at what the preview for each of  these would be here as well I want to keep this   a little less formal so this is just going to be  dear Alex I can go through and take a look what it   looks like for everybody down below do we want a  comma or how do we want this separated afterwards   so for punctuation I'll just leave it there this  is what I like in case from the list a name was   missing or didn't have it we can for an invalid  response we can still make sure it says something   uh so if I drop down maybe I want it just to be to  whom it may concern or maybe I want it as none but   you have that option there remember if there's any  issues just like before to go and check any match   Fields uh to go and see if there is something  missing from the data but this looks good here I'm   just going to hit okay so now I have my address  block that it's going to pull out for each letter   it's going to have a greeting line that will match  to the right person let's do one more thing let's   see at very bottom uh I have this uh we have this  email and file and we'll add is this uh correct so   I want to be able to pull out each person's email  so maybe I want it right here I can go up at this   time just insert that field and it's going to be  email and we'll leave it like that so I think we   got all the different places that we want the  information hold from that Excel document into   this word document an important thing to do after  you've inserted your different fields and greeing

lines and addresses is to go to the preview up  here so take a look right now it's not on the   preview but look at address block as soon as I  click this on it shows me what this would look   like and if I arrow through uh to the different  recipients you can check to see if what which   ones how they look and you can make any changes  so if you had exra spaces in any of these uh   if you saw duplicate names you can edit right in  the preview results and it will make that change   the other thing that you can do is actually check  for errors here so you can uh take a look at the   different options you can simulate the mail merge  I have a pretty simple one with only 10 different   ones but this is just another option um that you  can do uh just to check for any possible errors   here so when you're all done if you want you can  turn off your pre if you want but if everything's   looking good I also like to make a save of this  as I going as I'm going along so you can just   save this document once you have your different  information uh all the different fields in but   if I go over to finish and merge I have some  different options and I want to talk about uh   these ones right here the print documents and send  email messages now if I go to print document even

though there's just the one page here if I go and  hit all and hit okay and select my printer it's   going to uh print out the 10 different ones that  I have so it's going to go through and print out   uh the name on each of these separately with the  different places so if I just hit okay I'd go and   uh go to the printer that I want and then it would  be done so this is a great way to print those if   you are mailing these take a look at the envelopes  up top because you can actually do a mail merge   with this that would match uh to be placing it  on there the other thing that you can do and   and probably how I would be doing a lot of this is  just emailing out things uh these documents so if

we go to send email messages notice right away it  picked the correct field it chose email out of all   the different ones that I have through the Excel  document uh at this point I'm going to leave it as   the email and I'm going to put a uh subject line  we'll just say is your email correct in here what   type of mail format do we want it to be do we want  it to be attachment plain text HTML and the next   one is do we want all of them so we only have 10  I'm going to go ahead and hit okay then you'll see   it zip through all the different ones and then  I'm going to open up Microsoft Outlook to show   you but just to let you know these are fake email  addresses so I am going to get them returned as   it zips through you see it all changing of what's  getting sent out let's go over to Outlook now in   Outlook it's all coming through as undeliverable  as I thought because these are the fake emails but   if they were real emails they would have been  sent out so just uh and you can see if I go to   sent items there they were right there showing  that uh it was being sent out but then if I take   a look at the message here was the message right  here it was sent as HTML as a form letter   inside of this so you can see how this will save  you so much time if you're taking information from   that Excel uh sheet that you've created and then  just with a simple document and mail merging them   you can have it either printed or emailed out  so quickly so I hope you like this tutorial on   how to mail merge from Microsoft Excel to word  to Outlook let me know what you think thanks   for watching this time on teachers Tech I'll see  you next time with more Tech tips and tutorials