In this brief session I'm going to explain the process on how to create labels the process
is actually simpler than one things or they're used to probably tinkering with it but basically
all you have to have is Microsoft word and then the best is to use an excel file the excel file
could be a list of names on the first row can be different labels for example customer number the
company the first name last name telephone state address cities zip and so on you could have here
any other new fields as well so this list as you can see you can create it by either extracting
it from an existing system or you can simply type those addresses and keep those in a list somehow
somewhere by simply typing them one after the other so then the next step here is I'm going to
close this you don't need the excel file open when you do this and we need to go to Microsoft word
under word we need to click on mailings tab here so we click on actually a mail merge option here
and then we go under step by step wizard i usually recommend the step-by-step wizard
because it takes you step by step as it says in order to generate those labels so we click here
and then we tell the system that we are going to create labels then click on next to start
the document then the next here is telling us that we are going to use the current document
layout or you can use an existing document if you want but in this case it's going to
be labels just populated with the basic names and addresses if you wanted something where it says
labels for with other information then you can simply type it here on the left hand side
then the next option here is to choose label options we need to tell the system
what kind of labels are we using for this mail merge then here under label vendors
unless you have Microsoft so you need to change it to something else and usually the
most common one is the Avery us letter under every us letter notice there are a lot of different ones
and usually when you go to the store and buy those you'll have the number directly on the label
so it will tell you in the box of labels as to which number it is which product number
so one of the common ones that we use is the Avery 5160 which tells me it's one inch in
height and then 2.63 inches so we click ok here the next step here in the bottom notice it says
go to the select the recipients so you click on select recipients and then you can use an existing
list you can use the contacts from outlook or you can type a new list if you want it as well like
i said earlier it's easier to just type the list first in excel and then you just utilize that list
so we go here under use an existing list and then we go and find it and locate it click on browse
and then we are going to go here under week three and this is the customer list for mail merge
now in here there are two tabs or two sheets in this spreadsheet now when i had this earlier it
was the first one so basically I'm not going to open it again but it's going to be one of the
first ones usually when you open excel it's going to have two to three tabs that it starts with
so we'll pick the first one and these are all the names you could filter those names
if you wanted but for now we're going to leave everything alone for the sake of simplicity then
we are going to go and here on the first one we are going to click on
insert merge field so we go here to the first label and we click on merge insert merge field
and we say insert first name a space insert last name hit enter then insert street address
hit enter again and then we are going to insert the city comma state
and then the zip
now here is where pretty much everybody has problems because the labels don't generate
don't populate through all the fields so the next thing what you need to do here is we click on
arrange labels and then the next thing what you have to do here is click on update all labels
so before you go and preview them you want to update the same information that you see here
to all of the labels all over in that same sheet so the computer will do this automatically for you
and this is just for the labels you click on update all labels and notice it's a whole
bunch of stuff in there then we click on preview your labels and notice the information is posted
if for some reason we want to change something here we could go back to the previous step
where the code stuff is highlighted and say the first and last name we want to make it bold
click on bold there if you want to put the word to we could do that right in front of it
but then remember to update all labels again and that will populate all the labels then
preview your labels and then complete the merge you can preview them how it's going to look page
by page by page but basically the last step what you want to do is complete the mail merge
you complete it you can print it or you can click on edit individual labels if we click
on edit individual labels click on ok this is the final product so the final product here basically
it's the whole merged results this you shouldn't have to tinker with it
if something is not correct it is recommended that you go back to your excel file i'm not going to
save the results here you go to your excel file you change whatever you need to change
and then you come here to the previous step which by the way you can save this form and you can save
it particularly with the codes at this stage and anytime you run it in the future it will actually
pull from the same list of addresses and list of information you just have to keep the same file
the data file and the form this is referred to as the form file in the same folder it's
basically the same folder or linked it the same structure that it was to start with and then once
you change something you just go back to preview the labels and complete the merge all over again