We see it everyday, personalised emails, letters and brochures sent to us. It makes it feel like someone has made the extra effort to write to us. As it happens this is quite easy to do using a feature in Microsoft Word call Mail Merge. It allows you to create a letter, label, email or other document and using a database of names and information add that to create individual documents. The document can then be printed, saved or sent out as an email.

Excel is very popular and is often used to create lists of information, also known as a database. Although a mail merge can be done from many other databases I have chosen to use Excel here as it is popular and easy to use. See the videos below on how to use it. The videos are similar but one is a mail merge to a letter for printing and the other is to send by email.

Coming up for the holidays you might find this useful for dropping a personalised line to all your family, friends and colleagues.

Mail Merge to Letter

Mail Merge to Email