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.

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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.

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Sometimes you may need to change the same data in a several of worksheets, so instead of going through each of them separately, Excel let’s you group them and enter the new information once and make it appear in all the other worksheets that you specify.

1. We’ll use the following Excel sheet for this example – it contains sales data for a beverage distribution company. First, you need to group the all the spreadsheets where the same data will be entered, so click the Control key and select the individual worksheets. In this example, you need to fix the last name of Mary Roberts by inserting the missing “t” in Roberts. We are going to do it once and the change will appear in all the other spreadsheets.

2. Now that you have selected all the sheets where the same change needs to happen – in this case, you want to fix Mary Roberts’ last name in the January, February and March 2007 sales sheet. Next, go to cell A8, and fix the last name from “Robers” to “Roberts.”

3. The last name has been fixed in all three spreadsheets. Click on the January and March 07 sheets to double check that the change took place. Now, hit the Control key and de-select all the individual sheets to ungroup them. Fantastic!! Now you know how to make changes or enter data into multiple spreadsheets at the same in three quick easy steps.

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