Mail Merge

[sarahmichelef]

I promised nenie I'd post my holiday letter mail-merge directions.  These are in Office2004 for the Mac, assuming that you have an excel spreadsheet of addresses that you want to turn into a stack of envelopes.

1. Make a new word doc
2. go to Tools -> Envelopes
3. Set your return address (don't forget your country if some of your letters are going internationally)
4. Down at the bottom of the window, select "data merge"
5. Choose "get data -> open data source"
   
6. Select the appropriate cell range (I do the whole worksheet)
7. From the "Merge Field" section, drag & drop the fields you want onto the envelope
8. In the "merge" section, set your query options (I have some addresses that are still missing, so I told it to merge all the fields where the Address1 field isn't blank)
9. Select "merge to new document"  (the second button from the left) or, if you're really brave, merge directly to the printer
10. Print

I take no responsibility if this doesn't work for you.

Comments

[baronessmartha.livejournal.com]

I print the first page onto plain paper so I can hold it up behind the labels and make sure I don't need to add spaces to make it all fit correctly.

I have found that failure to do this increases the likelyhood of broken pencils, used tissue and general stomping around.

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

*nod*
If you're printing onto labels this makes oodles of sense.

I'm printing directly onto my envelopes. Less steps = happier me.

[nenie.livejournal.com]

OK, so how about if all your addresses are in Address Book?

Suggestions?

[alphasarah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that I don't know. My hunch is that there should be some way to export the vCards of the addresses you want to use and then import them to the Office Address book and then merge the addresses from there, but I don't know off the top of my head how to do that. D'you have a copy of Pages lying around? It might have the same merging functionality and play nicer with Address Book.

[nenie.livejournal.com]

yeah, don't have pages
hrmmm
i'll have to think about that one
cuz, they're all so nice and neat in AB
you'd think that apple would make it easy, yknow?