How to do a mail merge in outlook with excel

A mail merge in Outlook with Excel! That's a powerful combination. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you achieve this:

Prerequisites:

  1. You have Microsoft Office Outlook and Microsoft Office Excel installed on your computer.
  2. You have a list of contacts in Excel that you want to merge with a template in Outlook.
  3. You have a template in Outlook that you want to use for the mail merge.

Step 1: Prepare your Excel data

  1. Open your Excel file and make sure it's in a format that can be easily imported into Outlook. Typically, this means having a table with the following columns:
    • Email address
    • First name
    • Last name
    • Any other relevant information you want to include in the mail merge
  2. Save your Excel file as a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file. This will make it easy to import into Outlook.

Step 2: Create a new mail merge in Outlook

  1. Open Outlook and go to the "Mail" tab.
  2. Click on "New Email" to create a new email message.
  3. In the "To" field, click on the "Select Contacts" button.
  4. In the "Select Contacts" dialog box, click on "From Outlook Contacts" and then select "Import/Export".
  5. Choose "Import from file" and select the CSV file you created in Step 1.
  6. Click "OK" to import the contacts into Outlook.

Step 3: Set up the mail merge

  1. In the "To" field, select the contacts you just imported.
  2. Click on the "Insert Merge Field" button in the "Tags" group of the "Mail" tab.
  3. In the "Insert Merge Field" dialog box, select the field you want to insert (e.g., "First Name", "Last Name", etc.).
  4. Click "OK" to insert the merge field.

Step 4: Customize the mail merge template

  1. In the "Message" field, type in the text you want to use for the mail merge.
  2. Use the merge fields you inserted in Step 3 to customize the text. For example, you can use "{First Name}" to insert the first name of each contact.
  3. Use the "Format Text" button to format the text as needed.

Step 5: Run the mail merge

  1. Click on the "Send" button to send the mail merge.
  2. Outlook will automatically populate the email messages with the data from your Excel file.
  3. Review the email messages to ensure they are correct and send them as needed.

Tips and Variations: