How to do a mail merge from outlook
A mail merge from Outlook! Here's a step-by-step guide to help you do a mail merge from Outlook:
Prerequisites:
- You have Microsoft Word installed on your computer.
- You have a list of contacts in Outlook that you want to merge with a document.
- You have a document (e.g., a letter or an email) that you want to merge with the contact information.
Step 1: Prepare your document
- Open Microsoft Word and create a new document or open an existing one.
- Type the main content of your document, leaving placeholders for the contact information you want to merge.
- Use the following placeholders to indicate where you want to insert the contact information:
&[First Name]
for the first name&[Last Name]
for the last name&[Email Address]
for the email address&[Company]
for the company name&[Address]
for the address
- Save your document as a Word document (.docx).
Step 2: Prepare your contact list in Outlook
- Open Outlook and go to the "Contacts" folder.
- Select the contacts you want to merge with your document. You can select multiple contacts by holding the Ctrl key while clicking on each contact.
- Right-click on the selected contacts and choose "Export Contacts" from the context menu.
- In the "Export Contacts" window, select "Comma Separated Values (CSV)" as the file format and choose a location to save the file.
- Click "Export" to export the contacts to a CSV file.
Step 3: Merge the contacts with your document
- Open Microsoft Word and open the document you prepared in Step 1.
- Go to the "Mailings" tab in the ribbon.
- Click on "Select Recipients" and then "Use an Existing List" from the drop-down menu.
- Browse to the CSV file you exported in Step 2 and select it.
- Click "OK" to import the contacts into Word.
- Word will create a new document with the contact information inserted into the placeholders you created in Step 1.
Step 4: Review and edit the merged document
- Review the merged document to ensure that the contact information is correct and formatted as desired.
- Make any necessary edits to the document, such as changing the font or layout.
- Save the merged document as a new file.
Tips and Variations:
- You can also use Outlook's built-in "Mail Merge" feature to merge contacts with a document. To do this, go to the "Mailings" tab in the ribbon, click on "Mail Merge" and follow the prompts.
- If you want to send the merged documents as emails, you can use Outlook's "Send" feature to send the documents as attachments.
- You can also use other mail merge tools, such as Microsoft's "Mail Merge" add-in for Outlook, to simplify the process.