Mailing Labels for your Christmas Cards
Do you just hate writing out all those names and addresses on your Christmas card envelopes? Wouldn’t labels printed from a computer be easier? If you agree, lets get started.
The first thing you need to do is create a database. Database can mean an Excel file that contains the information of all the people in your address book. Follow these simple steps.
1. Open a new Excel file and save it as "Address Book".
2. In Cell A1, type FName (First Name), in Cell B1, type LName, In Cell C1, type Address, in Cell D1, type in City, in Cell E1, type in State, in Cell F1, type in Zip. That is all the information you will need for mailing labels, but you can continue and type in phone numbers, email addresses etc., things you may want to reference for another project. What you just entered are called Field Headers and they are a necessary part to the database.
3. Now comes the work, take out your address book and enter the information in the cells below the Field Headers, saving periodically as you go. Example below.
|
Fname |
Lname |
Address |
City |
State |
Zip |
|
Mary |
Smith |
123 West |
Macomb |
MI |
48044 |
4. When you are done, save and close the database.
5. Open a new Word document. From Tools on the menu, select Mail Merge.
6. Click the drop-down arrow to the right of “Create" and choose mailing labels, and then choose "Active Window"; this means the new blank word document is going to be the final merged document with your labels.
7. Click the drop-down arrow next to "Get Data", and choose open data source. Navigate to your Excel file called "Address Book". (Make sure in the Open Data Source Window you are viewing all file types, you can do this from the Files of Type field (at the bottom of the open window), select All Files (*,*) from the drop down menu.). Double click your Address Book file to select it.
8. If a window pops up asking for Named or Cell range, choose entire spreadsheet, click OK, then click the option to Set Up Main Document.
9. A label option window will open. The standard size mailing label is the Avery, 5160 mailing labels (they can be purchased at any office supply store), select this option and click OK.
10. The Create Label Window will open. Visualize this window as an actual label. Click the "Insert Merge Field" drop down and start inserting your fields as you would if you were writing them. For example: Click Fname and then press the spacebar, then choose Lname, now press enter because you want the Address to display on the next line. Continue entering the appropriate fields, you can even key in a comma between the City and State. The displayed data should appear like this:
«F_Name» «L_Name»
«Address»
«City», «State» «Zip»
11. Click OK, click merge. Take the default option of Merge to: New Document, click merge again. Voila! Print and label those Christmas Greetings. Merry Christmas!!
You can save the merged file to use later, or not. To recreate, just open a new word document and follow steps 5-11.
