Video:Word Tutorial: How to Do a Mail Merge

Transcript:Word Tutorial: How to Do a Mail Merge

Hello this is Adam Watstein for About.com. Now we're going to create a mail merge.

A Mail Merge in Microsoft Word

We're going to take a list of names and addresses from an Excel document and we're going to merge it with this document. We're essentially going to take individual names and addresses and put them on this document for mailing. Now we won't have type in each name and address. Here's how we do it.

Instructions for Using Mail Merge

Select the Mailings tab and from there you'll find Start Mail Merge.” Scroll on down to step-by-step, Mail Merge Wizard, and from here you'll find the wizard starts. The first thing you're going to do is select your document type. You can create a mail merge with letters, email messages, envelopes, labels, directories. Since we're merging with this letter, we'll stick with Letter. Select Next.

Selecting a Document for Mail Merge

Now you're going to select a starting document. Do you want to use the current document? Do you want to start from a template? Do you want to start from an existing document? Again, we already have a document up that we want to merge with, so we're going to stick with Use Current Document. Select Next. We have to select recipients. Do we have an existing list that we want to use? Are we selecting our list from Outlook? Do we want to type up a new list? I already have an existing list, and I'm going to browse for it. I know it's an Excel document, and I know I have it in my documents folder. Once I find the Excel list I'm looking for, I open it up.

Contacts for Mail Merge

Here I'll find my list of names that I am looking to bring into Merge. If it's checked, it will be merged. If it's not checked, it won't be merged. Select or deselect the names you want to merge. Once you've done it, select OK. You'll see your Excel list in the existing list pane. Select Next to write your letter. Here you'll notice that the wizard has added some items to write the letter with, such as address block, greeting line, electronic postage. We already have an address block in this template, so let's delete that and then head over to the address block in the wizard. Here we can decide how we want our address to look when it merges into the document. By selecting the different types of preset, you see in the preview pane how the address is going to look on the document. Once you've selected the style you like, select Ok.

Changing the Greeting in Mail Merge

On your document now, you'll find the address block, and now let's get rid of this template where the greeting is so we can head over back to the wizard and select the greeting line any way you like it. And once you've selected the style that you like, select Ok. Back in the wizard, select Preview Your Letters, and then you'll see the address that you selected in the style you wanted it, the greeting that you chose.

Back up at the ribbon, you can click the arrows to preview the names on your list. Lastly, you select Next to complete the merge, and from here you can edit individual letters or just move ahead and print. That's how we create a mail merge in Word 2010.

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