Mail Merge with MS Word

One of the easiest programs for mail merge or printing address labels, is MS Word. Any program, such as Avery Labels, can use command delimited files, or known as CSV or text files, for importing. CSV files are text files that have a comma between fields, and have 1 line per record. You can open these files with MS Word, MS Excel, or even notepad.

The following is a walk through on how to create a mail merge for address labels, for one of your stylists.

First, select Mail Merge from the menu bar.

Next, we will set the options that will filter the records we want. The Blue section sets how you want the data exported. Keep CSV as the default, but if you program can accept XML, select this one. The Yellow section selects the customers you want. For our example, we are going to select All Customers. The Green section allows you to selectively filter out records you want. In our example, we only want to print labels for Vicki's customers. The Red section will show you how many customers you have selected.

Once you are ready to export the record, select Export, and the file will be created.

Note: By default, the file will be created in the Salon Operation directory, under Program Files. You can change the name of the file, if you want to make several export files.

This example is using Microsoft Word 2002.

Open MS Word, and select Mail Merge or Envelopes and Labels from the Tools:

If you want to print labels, select the option in Red. If you want to print form letters, select the option in Blue.

Labels (The Red Option)

When you select the Labels option, you will have a dialog to select the label product you are using. If you are using an Avery label product, select the label number, and click New Document. This will create a new blank document in the format of your labels.

Next, the process is the same as Mail Merge (below), but you will keep the existing document that you just created. Select Mail Merge Wizard from the Toolbar again, and you will start a merge. Continue now to mail merging below.

MS Word Mail Merge (The Blue Option)

The MS Word mail merge wizard (on the right by default) will walk you through merge process. You can create labels, form letter, anything that accepts a list of addresses.

You should see the following prompts, and answers for this example:

MS Word: What type of document are you working on?
Answer: Set this to Labels if you want to select a label format (if you started with the Red option above), such as Avery Labels. If you are creating form letters, select Letters.

MS Word: How do you want to setup your mailing labels?
Answer: Change the document layout.

MS Word: Select Recipients
Answer: Use an existing list. Now select Browse below, and change the file type to Text Files.

You will also need to change your directory to Salon Operations. Pull down the list at the top (where it says My Data Sources) and change it to C:\Program Files\Salon Operations, and you should see the CSV file you created, call customers.csv. Select this file.

Next you will see a dialog selecting the records you want. Keep the default, all selected, and click OK.

Click Next to arrange your labels.