Using Google Docs Mail Merge is a great way to save time and stop copy and paste errors.
Did you know that small and medium sized business waste up to 567 hours per year on admin tasks.
That's almost 3.5 months of one person's job.
So if you don't use Google Docs Mail Merge you're missing out on potential efficiency gains.
And that's why in this video we're going to show
you how to easily Mail Merge in Google Docs in just a few minutes.
Hi everyone! My name is James, and in this channel...
we show you everything and anything you want to know about document automation.
And in this specific video we 're showing you how to mail merge inside Google Docs
Now the tool we're going to use to do this is a Google Docs Add-on called Portant.
Portant allows you to automate documents from Sheets and Forms,
import images into those documents,
export them to PDF,
send custom emails,
and a whole lot more!
But in this specific video we're going to take a closer look
at Portant's Google Docs Mail Merge tool.
Now all you need to do to get started is to head over to the marketplace
page for Portant and install the add-on to your Workspace account.
We put the link in the description below.
After you've finished installing Portant open up a Google doc.
This is the template for you data merge.
In this example we've picked an employment contract.
Then to open Portant Data Merge just click the 'Add-ons' menu
There you'll see Portant Data Merge and then click 'Start'.
After Portant finishes opening you can see all the different options where you can source data from.
In this example we're going to pick Google Sheets.
and then select the spreadsheet we want to source data from.
This is the file that stores the data which will...
go into your template document to make each individual output.
If your Google Sheet has multiple sheets within it...
you need to select the sheet which holds your data.
In this example we only have one.
Then after you've done that, just click 'Continue'.
This opens up a new page with a 'Data Sources Table' in it.
This 'Data Sources Table' contains a row for every header in your spreadsheet.
So, when we want to add a tag, we just click 'Insert'...
and then it inserts a tag for that column header.
Then we want to add all the tags we need for the whole document.
If you want to customise a tag, or shorten it, you can click on the row.
This opens up a sub menu.
You can put a custom tag in the field, and then close the row and insert that tag.
This is really useful if you have really long column headers...
of need to shorten the tag for formatting reasons.
Now what are the options?
So in this example we want to create a separate document for every row.
But there's also the option of combining all the rows into one document...
and below you can select the rows you want to make documents from.
Now that we've finished with the 'Data Merge Settings' we can move to the 'Document Output Settings'.
The key one here is the document name.
We can use tags from the 'Data Sources Table' in this name.
So in this example we're going to append the name of the candidate to the end of the contract.
In the top right hand corner of the 'Document Outputs' box you can see the folder.
If you click this this shows you the folder that Portant has made for your document merge.
This is tied to the actual document template, itself.
Anytime you run the automation it will place documents within this folder.
You can also move this folder in different locations in your Google Drive...
and it will always remember to put the documents in that folder.
But, if you want to put documents in an existing folder, you can also change that in the options menu.
Now something that would be useful for this is to share the documents with the employees after they've been made.
Just below the 'Documents Output' box we have an option to share via email.
But in this example we actually don't have an email column in the spreadsheet yet.
So i'm going to head back over to the spreadsheet and add a new header in with 'email'.
I'm just going to use my own email.
When we open up the template document again the new column header isn't in the 'Data Sources Table'.
But in the top right hand corner of the table there's a 'Refresh' button.
We're going to click that...
and the new email header will be at the bottom of the 'Data Sources Table'.
Now we're ready to set up the email!
Here we've got options to add different email addresses,
different subject lines,
and an email body.
And all the template tags are on the right hand side and can be inserted into these fields.
Below this there's the 'Attachments' where we can attach the document as a PDF...
or share the Google Docs file with 'viewer', 'editor' or 'commenter' access.
Then below that, there's also sending conditions.
So we can send if a certain condition is true.
So i'm just going to paste something in here which i've made earlier and then save and close this box.
Which means we can click the 'Create and Share Documents' button!
After you've clicked this button what Portant is going to do is check all the document tags to make sure they're all correct.
After that, it's going to start the data merge!
We can click the status bar at the top to open the folder and watch the documents as they're made.
Now we've created four documents here let's open one up and see a customized version.
That looks good!
And that's it!
We've done our first mail merge. We're finished!
And if you want to see more videos like this teaching you document automation tips and tricks...
just click the subscribe button below and don't forget to hit the notification bell!
and with that being said thank you very much for watching we'll see you in the next video!