The mail merge feature of Microsoft Word allows you to create personalized mass letters, envelopes, labels, or emails. This feature is pretty useful if you work as an HRD staff and often create mass letters to the employees at your company. Creating personalized mass letters with Microsoft Word is pretty easy and you can use a wide range of data sources. From an Excel file, Outlook contacts, Microsoft Access, so on. In this post, we will show you how to create mass personalized letters from an Excel file. The Microsoft Office version we use in this example is 2019.

Before getting started, you need to create an Excel file that contains the data of the employees (name, address, date of birth and so on). If you already have this file, you don’t need to create a new one. Just use it instead. One thing, MS Word uses the header (the top row) of each column as the reference variable. It will read the fields beneath the header and insert them into the section of your letter according to what you specified. Here is the example of the Excel file we use in this example.

You can save your Excel file into the regular format of Excel (XLSX).

Once you are done creating the Excel file, you can start creating the letter template you want to use for the mass letters. Once done, go to the Mailings menu and click Start Mail Merge -> Ste-by-step Mail Merge Wizard.

A panel will appear on the right side of your MS Word window. Specify the document type and click the Next: Starting document link on the bottom side.

Select a document as the template. Since you have just created your own document, select the Use the current document option and click the Next: Select recipients on the bottom side.

Click Browse and select the Excel file you have just created earlier above. On the appearing pop-up dialog, simply click OK button (two times). Click the Next: Write your letter link once the file source is selected.

Put your cursor to the section within your letter where you want to insert the Excel data and click the Insert Merge Field and select one of the available headers. For instance, if you want to insert the names from the Excel file, you can select Name.

You should see the “<<column_header>>” sign on the section you specified. Next, click the Next: Preview your letters link on the bottom side. You should see your Excel data inserted. Click navigation buttons to preview the letters.

To insert another data (addresses in this example), click the Previous: Write your letter and put your cursor to another section within your letter you want to insert the fields into. Click Insert Marge Field once again and select another column header.

Click the Next: Preview your letters link once again to preview your letters. Until here, you have successfully created your letters. If you want to print them, simply click the Next: Complete the merge and click the Print link on the next step. Or, if you want to print your letters later, you can save your file into a regular MS Word format (DOCX). Make sure to not remove the Excel file you have selected on this letter file.