Locked lesson.
About this lesson
Learn how to use the mail merge feature to personalize every single publication to the individual recipient.
Lesson versions
Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:
2016, 2019/365.
Quick reference
Creative Ideas - Mail Merge
A Mail Merge simply uses one document (flyer, letter, or email) and retrieves individual mailing addresses from a database (typed for the project or an Outlook contact list).
When to use
Send individual, Full-Color flyers, postcards, or emails to multiple people with one easy process.
Instructions
- Start with the Business PostCard publication template found under File, New, or open the corresponding Exercise file with this video lesson.
Note: If you’d like to learn how to do an Outlook “email merge” using this similar flyer, go to https://www.goskills.com/Course/Outlook “Email Merge, Full Color Flyers”
- Click the Mailings ribbon, Mail Merge, and select “Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard”
Click Contacts, and select the folder with the contacts to use in the Email Merge.
- On the right panel, a task pane opens and you can select any of the 3 list options; for this lesson we select “Type a New List” and click the Create link at the bottom
- Enter the basic list information into the database window and click OK when finished:
- Then Save the database list to your file system. Note: the finished database opens on your screen. If you want to edit (fix or add more) address, you must click the name of the list and then click the Edit button.
- On the Mail Merge panel, you will select which fields to enter onto the postcard. If this is a mailer, the easiest selection is the “Address Block”:
Position the Address Block and re-size it so the street addresses will not wrap within the box. Be careful not to delete the arrows on either side of the field or the mail merge will not work.
- Click “Create merged publications” and select “Merge to a new publication”
This allows you a chance to review the addresses and make any list minute changes before printing the entire mailing.
- The final postcard file should have all the merged addresses:
- Save the file and print.
- 00:05 Hello, in this lesson I want to show you how to do a mail merge to
- 00:07 a postcard mailing.
- 00:09 So basically we're going to find a postcard in the file new,
- 00:12 double click any particular postcard.
- 00:15 When that opens up, we have our front, the front of the postcard is our products and
- 00:20 services and the back of the postcard is where the mailing is going to go.
- 00:23 Well if I have 100 people I want to receive this postcard,
- 00:26 I'm certainly not gonna sit here and type their names in.
- 00:28 I'm gonna mail merge a contact list to this area.
- 00:32 That is on the mailings ribbon right up here.
- 00:34 Notice most of them are grayed out, but on the left hand side we have an option
- 00:37 that says mail merge, e-mail merge and select recipient.
- 00:41 Let's go ahead and start here with the mail merge.
- 00:43 The second action says step by step.
- 00:45 Take a look on the right-hand side of the screen when I click this.
- 00:48 A task pane comes up that's gonna walk you through the process.
- 00:51 First, it explains the steps.
- 00:53 Step 1, step 2, step 3.
- 00:54 Then I have a down arrow, when I activate that, here we begin.
- 00:58 It wants to know, do you wanna use an existing list?
- 01:01 Select from your outlook contacts which, by the way, if you have that set up
- 01:04 it is magic how that works, it's wonderful, or type a new list.
- 01:08 I'm gonna go ahead and type a brand new list and
- 01:11 then click this option that says create.
- 01:13 When I create this, this is a base level database.
- 01:16 It's asking for first name, last name, company, address, city, state, zip.
- 01:21 What I'm gonna do is type in some base level information and
- 01:25 then hit okay but it'll take me a moment so I'm gonna pause and come right back.
- 01:32 When the data has been type then go ahead and
- 01:34 hit okay and it's absolutely going to ask you to save this somewhere.
- 01:38 I'll go ahead and name it mail merge address list it's going to save into
- 01:43 my data sources if I wanna change it now's the time to do that I'll go ahead and
- 01:47 hit save.
- 01:48 Yes and now here is an example.
- 01:50 Now, I cannot edit here, try as you mind you can double click and try this type.
- 01:54 You cannot edit on this screen,
- 01:56 you must instead activate the name of it click edit right here.
- 02:01 Now you can go back in and make corrections.
- 02:04 I just wanted to point that out to you, okay?
- 02:06 Anyway, regardless I can sort these, I can filter by zip code,
- 02:10 I can do whatever I want right here, but I'm going to go ahead and hit okay and
- 02:14 the rest of my mailing ribbon now brightened up.
- 02:17 I'm going to continue working right over here on this task pane, but
- 02:20 I want you to know, you can get really advanced with these buttons up here.
- 02:24 The nice thing about this task pane is it knows what step I'm on,
- 02:28 prepare your publication, and
- 02:30 it says that I can add any of these blocks of information right in here.
- 02:34 Now personally, I'm gonna get rid of this block, it was just a placeholder so
- 02:39 I'm gonna get rid of it and I'm gonna let this task pane do its work.
- 02:43 I can enter each one of these individually.
- 02:46 So let's see, I could put first name, then I'd have to put a space bar, last name.
- 02:51 But as you can see it's word wrapping so now I have to extend this.
- 02:54 And keep in mind, the computer doesn't know when you want punctuation.
- 02:57 You have to hit the enter key, you have to hit the space bars and the commas.
- 03:01 Again, I'm gonna get rid of that little place holder and
- 03:03 show you one other thing right down here, let me scroll down a little bit.
- 03:07 It's called an address block, here it is right here.
- 03:10 Watch this, when I click address block
- 03:12 it gives me an example of what's going to happen, that's fine, I'll hit okay.
- 03:16 And there it is, it just put its own address block in there.
- 03:19 Now what you need to know about mail merge code are these little arrows on the end.
- 03:23 Those are called chevrons.
- 03:26 If you should delete one of those arrows on either side,
- 03:29 you would break your mail merge.
- 03:30 In every post card we'll save address block and won't have addresses.
- 03:34 So please be sure to just leave that alone,
- 03:36 let but the codes remain the way they are.
- 03:39 Okay, and we are going to actually extend this in case we have any long addresses,
- 03:43 make sure its extended, and we're basically ready.
- 03:46 If you'll scroll down right over here on the right it says create
- 03:50 merged publication.
- 03:52 So I'll go ahead and activate that.
- 03:54 And it asks you, do you want to go straight to the printer.
- 03:56 Never go straight to the printer, word of warning.
- 03:59 Always merge to a new publication because you've one last chance to make any edits.
- 04:04 So, I'll go ahead and do that.
- 04:05 Merge to a new publication.
- 04:07 I'll move that down on my screen so that you can see the end result and
- 04:10 notice on the left hand side it says page one of six.
- 04:14 I have three addresses and two sides of repost cards so six pages.
- 04:18 Notice page one, there is my address for page one or postcard number one.
- 04:23 Post card number two shows up.
- 04:25 Post card number three is customer number three.
- 04:28 Is that wonderful?
- 04:29 And now all you have to do.
- 04:31 Now that I've made any changes, made any edits previewed,
- 04:34 just get my printer ready with my post cards and feed them in to the printer.
- 04:37 All right, have fun with that statement.
- 04:39 And in the next video we are going to do a similar concept but
- 04:42 we are going to create a catalog of products and pictures.
- 04:45 Thank you.
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