Write a personalized letter in Word using Excel data

Mail merge is one of the most useful features of Microsoft Word when wanting to send personalized letters, documents or e-mails to people you have stored in an Excel sheet. Let me show you how to use it.

I have an Excel document with people's titles, names and last names.

You can also have other personal info like addresses or emails stored in the sheet. Sky is basically the limit.

Open Microsoft Word and click Mailings in the menu.

Click Start Mail Merge and choose Step by Step Mail Merge Wizard...

As I want to write a personalized letter containing individual names, I chose Letters.

Click Next: Starting document.

I want to use the current empty document I'm currently in.

If you already have a document you want to send out, then choose the Start from existing document option.

Click Next: Select recipients.

I have and existing excel list of people I want to send a letter to (step 1) that's why I chose the Use an existing list option and then click Browse...

Find the Excel document with people you want to send the letter to and open it.

My excel document is called Recipients.xlsx.

All my contacts are in the Sheet1 of the Excel document.

If the first row of the sheet with the contacts (like in my case) contain the column header (Title, Name, Last name,....) then choose the First row of data contains column headers option.

Click OK.

Here are now all my recipients. As I want title to be before the name, I can simply click and drag it...

... in front of the Last name.

You can also Sort, Filter or even Find the duplicate entries of you want.

When done click OK.

If you don't have the letter written yet, like myself then click Next: Write your letter.

To add the greeting (the personalized part) click Greeting line...

If you have also address stored in your Excel document, then you can also click Address block to add the addresses to your letter.

You can now choose how you want to great your recipients. You can choose from the available options like Dear or type your own.

You can also choose to address the recipient with only the last name or name and last name combined.

Click OK when done.

«GreetingLine» is where the greeting will appear.

Same goes for the address block if you chose it as well. You can cut and paste it anywhere you want, just be sure it remains exactly as it was.

If you didn't write the letter yet, then write it now.

When done writing a letter, click Next: Preview your letters.

You can now click through all the recipients you added. Notice how the letter remains the same and only the recipients change.

If you want to exclude a certain recipient then simply click Exclude this recipient.

When done reviewing your personalized letters, click Next: Complete the merge.

When merge is done, you can click the Finish & Merge then choose what you want to do.

If you want to print out the letters with different recipients choose the Print Documents... option, if you want to send E-mails choose Send E-mail Messages...