Excel Tutorials

Since you probably have learned by now how to do a mail merge with Excel and Word, how about I show you how you can use the same principles and create a mailing label mail merge using both Excel and Word. In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a mailing label merge using Excel and Word, so that you can mail out your wonderful created letters from the successful mail merge in the previous tutorial.

1. First, ensure you have the Excel workbook where you have all the address data securely saved and accessible, although, you don’t need to have it open to create the mail merge. Open Microsoft Word 2007 and go to Mailings>Start Mail Merge>Labels, and the “Label Options” pop up window box will appear.
2. Under “Printer Information” select “Page printers” and under “Label information” select “Avery US Letter,” and finally, under “Product number” you need to find the size of the labels you will be using for the mail merge. And click OK. Now before moving on to the next step, go to Table Tools Layout>Table>View Gridlines, so that you can see the gridlines of the mailing labels.
3. Next, go to Mailings>Start Mail Merge>Select Recipients>Use Existing List and the “Select Data Source” pop up window box will appear. Next, find the Excel file that contains the address information for the mailing labels. After you find the file, click on the range or sheet within the workbook that has the table with the address information and click OK.
4. Now looking at the Word document, place the cursor in the first label field (upper left hand corner of the screen) and go to Mailings>Write & Insert Fields>Address Block, and next within the “Insert Address Block” pop up window box click the format that you want to use and hit OK.
5. Next, go to Mailings>Write & Insert Fields>Update Labels, and the format you selected will appear. Following that, go to Mailings>Preview Results>Preview Results and the mailing labels merge will appear for your review.
6. Once you review the document, go to Mailings>Finish>Finish & Merge to finish the process and then you will be ready to print or edit each label section individually.

Good Job! You just created a mailing labels mail merge, and this can really save you time and energy on your next mailing.

Posted in WorkSheets | Comments (0)

Have you ever been asked at work “Hey, do you know how to do a mail merge?” and you think to yourself, I know how to merge columns, yes I have done it but now I can’t remember for the life of me. Perhaps you did it once, or you saw someone do it and thought you would remember, but you don’t. Don’t worry, I will show you how simple and quick it is in this short tutorial. Follow these steps and you will look like a star in front of your peers.

1. First, ensure you have the Excel workbook where you have all the address data securely saved and accessible, although, you don’t need to have it open to create the mail merge. Open Microsoft Word 2007 and go to Mailings>Start Mail Merge>Step by Step Mail Wizard, and the “Step by Step Mail Merge” wizard will open up to the right hand side of your screen.
2. Under “Select document type,” click on “Letters” and hit “Next: Starting Document” to move to next step. Next, click on “create mail merge from the current Word document” and you also have the option to click on “from another existing word document.” And hit “Next: Select Recipients” and click on “Use an Existing List Option” - now we’re going to search for the Excel Workbook with the Address information. Hit Browse and you will see the “Select Data Source” pop window box.
3. Next, look through the options and when you find the Excel file with the address information, click it to select it. Now the “Select Table” pop up window box appears, and in here click on the specific Excel sheet or range that has the address information, and click OK to move to the next step.
4. Now you will see the list of the mail merge addresses. Delete the check marks from any piece of data that you don’t want to include and hit OK. And click “Next: Write your letter” to move to the following step.
5. In this step, go ahead and actually write the standard letter and leave blank the areas that you want to insert from the Excel file – in this case, the addresses data. Once you’re done writing the letter, then look to the right of your screen and you will see five options where you can insert information – the five main options are: Address block, Greeting Line, Electronic Postage, Postal Bar Code and More Items. For the purpose of this tutorial, click on “More Items” so that the “Insert Merge Field” pop up window box appears. In here, click the option you want and hit the “Insert” button.
6. Finally, click on “Next: Preview your letter” to view a sample of the document with the first address from the Excel file. Review it and if it looks OK, click on “Next: Complete the merge.” Your form letters will be created and ready to be printed.

Great Job! It takes several steps but you can see how easy and pain free a mail merge using Excel and Word can be.

Posted in WorkSheets | Comments (0)

If you use Excel a lot, you probably know how to merge cells. However, something you may not use or think much about is merging columns. At some point, you will have a need to merge two or more columns, and you’ll wonder how to do it but figure it’s probably too hard and you find another way to solve your dilema. But, merging columns in Excel is really easy, and in this tutorial, I will show you how to merge columns in a couple of quick steps.

1. First, click on the blank cell where you want to put the new merged data from the different columns. Go to Formulas>Function Library>Insert Function and the “Insert Function” pop up window will appear. Under “Or select a category” select “text” from the drop down menu. And under “Select a function” select “CONCATENATE.” Next, click OK.
2. The “Function Arguments” pop up window box appears. Next, type the cell address of the first column you want to merge (use the first cell of the first column you want to merge) in “Text1” and enter the second column address in “Text2” - again use the first cell address. And click OK.
3. Now you will see the new column with the merged data from different columns created in the location where you had originally specified.

Good Job! So the next time you wonder about merging columns, you’ll remember how easy it really is.

Posted in Columns | Comments (2)

You know how some times you receive raw data in word and you really need to analyze it but you can’t do it in the format that was emailed to you. You have the option of taking this raw data and coping and pasting it onto an Excel spreadsheet, but it will probably dump the pasted data on one column. And you can’t analyze it like that. The solution is to split the raw data into columns. Many people don’t know about this handy trick that lets you split data from column into several other columns. In this short tutorial, I will show you the easy steps to get this done.

1. Lets pretend that you have copied a massive bulk of information from a website. You copied cities, states and university names. But when you copied and pasted the data, all the information got dumped in one column in an Excel spreadsheet. And you want to separate the cities, states and university names into three separate columns. To accomplish this, first, select all the raw data, in this case, the column, and go to Data>Data Tools>Text to Columns, and now you will work with the “Convert Text to Columns” wizard.
2. Next, you need to click on either “Delimited” or “Fixed With” under the heading “Choose the file type that best describes your data” - if you’re dealing with text data with similar formatting, then “Delimited” works better but if you’re dealing with numbers “Fixed With” may work better. And click Next.
3. Now, you need to tell the wizard how to split the data and this will depend on whether you selected “Delimited” or “Fixed With.” If you clicked on “Delimited” you need to specify the symbol that separates the data, in most cases dealing with formatted text is a comma. But if you picked “Fixed With” then you can use the ruler that is provided to split the data by clicking and dropping the check point in the specific areas where you wan the data to be split. Also, you can see a preview of how the data will look like in “Data preview.”
4. Finally, hit the Finish button and click OK. Now you will see the data nicely organized into separate columns. Now you can add headings to each column and format your new table accordingly.

Great Job! Using this highly ignored but powerful function in Excel, you’ll be able to organzie and analyze raw data in no time and look really smart in front of your coworkers.

Posted in Columns | Comments (0)

We all know that Excel takes dull number figures and makes them eye appealing in graphs and charts, but did you know that you can also jazz up graphs and charts with pictures. You can, and it’s so easy in Excel 2007. In this short tutorial, I will show you how to insert a picture in a pie chart slice.
Please Note: Before formatting the pie chart with a picture, have an idea of what picture you want to use and where you have it located in your computer so that you don’t waste time searching for it when working with the pie chart.

1. Go to Start>Programs>Microsoft Excel. Go to Office>Open to open the Excel spreasheet where you have the pie chart saved.
2. Find the pie chart, and click the slice of the pie chart where you want to insert the picture. Once selected, right click it and go down to Format Data Series. In the “Format Data Series” pop up window box, select the “Fill” option and click on “Select Picture.”
3. Next, click on “File” and find the picture you want to insert within the “Insert Picture” pop up window box. Once you find the picture, hit “Insert” and click OK within the “Format Data Series” pop up window box.
4. Now you can see the picture in the pie chart slice area that you chose.

Pretty Neat! This is just one of the many cool things you can do in Excel 2007.

Posted in Charts | Comments (0)