Create address labels with mail merge

Christmas is always a busy time of year, so any help you can enlist from your computer will be very useful. In this article we are going to show you how Microsoft Office can take the strain out of printing address labels for cards and presents.

Not only will this save the time needed to write them by hand but you can add a personal touch with graphics or personal messages.

The labels are created by using mail merge, a tool that combines addresses stored in a spreadsheet or database with a document template.

Alternatively they can be created and stored in a special Word document.

All the addresses should be in one place, so this might be a good opportunity to pick one address book and get everything in order. We are going to use Office 2003 but see Mail Merge in Office 2007 later if you are using Office 2007.

A feature on using Open Office is also available (skip to the second page for mail merge instructions).

Shepherding addresses
The key to easy mail merge is careful preparation, and your addresses should be kept in one place.

You could use Microsoft Outlook but if you’re planning to build a brand new address book, we recommend use Excel.

Outlook is included in all version of Office 2003 but not in Office 2007 Home & Student, so keeping the list in Excel avoids problems should you upgrade.

There’s no need to worry if you have been using a different program for storing addresses because Word can import addresses from other sources, such as Access, Microsoft Works, Lotus 1-2-3 and even web pages and text documents. Mozilla Thunderbird is not directly supported.

Although these lists come from different places, it’s important to have a basic understanding of some database terms to prevent confusion.

Even though the information may come from a spreadsheet, it’s being used like a database.

The source file is made up of records, one for each person we’ll be creating a label for.

Each of those records consists of a number of fields. Each field contains one piece of information common to all the records, such as name, address and postcode.

Microsoft provides several templates for Excel address lists on the Office website.

Visit this site using Internet Explorer (you can’t access the templates in other browsers) to download the basic address list template.

You may want to do some quick editing before entering your addresses, changing ‘Zip code’ to ‘Postcode’ for example or adding more columns. It’s important to make any changes before adding the details to avoid missing anything out.

To change the spreadsheet so it’s better suited for our purposes we’ll change the Company name title to Street address, Street address to Town, add an extra column for County and change St Zip Code to Postcode. Once that’s done, enter the address details.