What is Mail Merge?

People in different professions have to send the same document with the same text to several people every day. These documents also have the same design and arrangement of content, but with different names and addresses. One obvious way to create such letters is to create them all individually, applying the same effort over and over again. Another solution might be a way in which such documents can be created automatically. This task can easily be automated by using the Mail Merge function in a word processor like Microsoft Word.

Table of Contents

• What is Mail Merge?
• What is Mail Merge in Word?
• What types of documents can you create using Mail Merge?
• How do you do a mail merge?
• Frequently asked questions
• Conclusion

What is Mail Merge?

Imagine that Christmas is approaching. In anticipation of the holidays, you want to write a holiday letter and send it to your relatives, colleagues, friends, buddies, and acquaintances. You have counted 25 people. Using a regular word processor will be difficult because you will have to copy and paste each message one by one into an open letter. It will take you quite a long time. To speed up this process, you can write a letter and create a Mail Merge in Word with 25 different greetings (Dear Anne, Dear Louren, Dear Faith, Dear Arnold, etc.).
Finally, with a Mail Merge, you can save time and quickly create a personalized PDF document with minimal effort. You don’t have to copy each letter and rewrite names and addresses. Mail Merging automates the process of putting unique data into the document. Mail merging works by linking a database to your document. The database contains unique elements (Anna, Lourens, Vera, Arnold, etc.), and the document is a letter, label, invoice, or any other file.

What is Mail Merge in Word?

Mail Merge is a feature of Microsoft Word and most other word processing applications. It allows users to send the same document or letter to dozens of recipients. This feature also allows you to connect a single form template to a data source. The source contains predefined and supported recipient data, such as a name or an address.
Microsoft Word is a tool that makes it easy to replace one part of a document with unique data elements.

In other words, “Mail Merge” is a feature that allows you to quickly create personalized documents from an existing data source (like an Excel spreadsheet). For example, if you have a form template, you can fill in some personalized data. You can then email it to each person as a PDF document. (Read about what a PDF file is and how to use it in our previous article.)

What types of documents can you create using Mail Merge?

• Invoices – If you are a freelancer and do work for various companies, you need to send invoices to your clients to get paid. If you have 10 or more different projects, using Mail Merge for such purposes is very convenient.
• Thank You Letters – If you like the way your employees work at your firm, you can send personalized letters of appreciation. This way you can highlight the merits of the person and their contributions to the business. The purpose of such a document is to make the employee feel important. It helps to keep a valuable professional in the company, and to motivate them to work even more productively.

• Payroll and HR Documents – If your firm has employees, you produce payslips, tax statements and other personalized communications every month. With Mail Merge you can create them all in one go instead of filling them in one by one.
• Envelopes -You can create envelopes with specific information printed on them (like the address) without having to write them individually.
• Student Application Forms – If you teach at a university or college, you have to fill out thousands of forms for your students, e.g. during the annual entrance exams. Mail Merge makes this process much easier. You don’t have to copy and paste text by hand, but simply enter the students’ names, and the program will automatically fill them in.

• Posters – If you are an actor, dancer, or musician, you need to create quality posters to announce your concerts in different cities on different dates. A beautifully and properly designed poster will attract a new audience. And success will not be long in coming.
• Course Certificates – When you teach a course, at the end of your training, you usually hand out course completion certificates to your students. The certificate includes the student’s name, exam result and more.

• Bulk Shipments – If you have your own flower store and you get 500 orders for different bouquets per week. You need to write the name and address for each recipient on each package. Each time you attach postcards with the same text. For example:
  
  “Dear Samanta, we are happy to please you with our fresh and beautiful flowers. May your day be more beautiful and bright! And may your mood be more festive! Thank you for choosing us. Dolce Studio.”
  
  So, you need to paste the same text to each client and change only the name and address for courier delivery. You can use Mail Merge to write these cards for bulk shipments.

How do you do a mail merge?

The process is very similar in almost every tool. In short, these are the steps:

1. Prepare your data source. Create an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet with one column per variable field (name, address, amount, etc.) and one row per recipient.
2. Create the document template. Write the letter, certificate or invoice in Word and insert placeholders where the personalized information should appear.
3. Connect the data to the template. Link the spreadsheet to the document and map each column to its placeholder.
4. Check a preview. Review a few records to catch errors, such as wrongly formatted dates or amounts.
5. Generate and send the documents. Create all documents in one go, print them, or email them as personalized PDF attachments.

If you want to see the process in detail, check our step-by-step guide to mail merge in Microsoft Word. And if you would rather not depend on Word or macros, with MailMergic’s online mail merge you can upload your template and your Excel file, then generate and send the personalized PDFs right from your browser.

Frequently asked questions

What do I need for a mail merge?

Just two things: a template document (for example a letter in Word) and a data source with your recipients’ information, usually an Excel or Google Sheets spreadsheet.

Can I email the merged documents as PDFs?

Yes. Word alone makes this hard (it needs macros), but tools like MailMergic generate each document as a PDF and automatically send it as a personalized attachment to each recipient. We explain the details in our FAQ.

Is mail merge only for letters?

No. You can create labels, envelopes, invoices, certificates, badges and any document that combines a fixed layout with variable data.

Do I need to know how to code?

No. Modern mail merge tools work without code: prepare your spreadsheet, upload your template, and the rest is automatic.

Conclusion

Mail Merge combines a document with a data source, to generate pre-addressed envelopes or mailing labels for example. It imports data from a separate source, such as a spreadsheet. It then fills in the blank spaces of the letter with the required information for each recipient. Some word processors can insert content from a database, spreadsheet, or table into text documents.

Ready to create your own personalized documents? With MailMergic you can merge your Word template with your Excel data and email the resulting PDFs, all online with nothing to install.

Try mail merge for free →