Welcome to Teacher's Tech my name is Jamie and it's great to have you here. Today I want to show you
how you can save time save time by using mail merge so I'm going to show you how you can use
mail merge in Google Sheets and Gmail for free so take a look at my Google Sheets right here I have
in my menu mail merge I'm going to show you how you can add that so when you just go ahead and
run this script it will send out all your emails with a customized email to it so let's get started
on how to mail merge with Google Sheets in gmail on teachers Tech question I was at a school the
other day when somebody asked me if I knew how to do a mail merge using Gmail and they were looking
for a free option so then I was doing a little search and I looked at other ones like autocrap
before but then I came across this page so this is the Google app script and I liked it because they
trusted this because it was coming from Google so I'm going to put a link to this uh resource Down
Below in the description because once you click on the link and scroll down a bit you're going
to see where you can make a copy of the Google Google Sheets that I was showing in the intro so
just go ahead and click on make a copy and then you can view the script if you want but I'm just
going to go ahead and hit make a copy here because this is going to bring me to the first step that
I need to have done so this opens up the Google Sheets here with the different column or fields
and then what's going to happen is it's going to have mail emerge in it with what the script was
written so make sure you get that open up then you can follow along with me so this is where we're
going to put all the different emails in here in the names in the description and we can go ahead
and edit these columns well most of them anyway two different ones that we cannot edit we need
to make sure we have the recipient one because this is where you're going to collect the emails
to send it to and we need this one over here but the other ones we can modify and we're going to
do a little modifying on this test here so in this I am going to leave the first name last name the
same here so but then what I want to change first is going to be if I go over to uh discount code I
don't want this to be discount code anymore I actually want this one to say Quantity so I'm
just going to put quantity in here just like this and just click off of it and the other thing I
want this one isn't going to be discount amount it's just going to be a mount like so I do need
another uh column here and it because I want to be able to total up so I'm going to have a
little equation in here that I can do and it will reflect in the email that I send out so I'm going
to just right click here and insert one column to the right and I'm going to put in total here
and actually I'm going to add one more because I want to have a due date in here also so I'm going
to right click and insert one column to the right again and this is going to be due date so you can
see I'm making some changes here to my different columns so these are going to be the different
fields that I'm going to be able to put into my email when I craft it across the top here so
the other thing is let's just go ahead and delete this in so if you were putting you could put more
people in I'm just going to do a demo of one here and it's always good to just to start with one to
make sure everything's working read the email if you need to make any changes to it so let's
go ahead and feel fill out some data here just for some examples you can change the email that
you put in so you get the email on it but I'm just going to fill in some of this information
so I filled in some information you can see just for an example here I haven't filled this one in
yet so I can add a formula here so I'm just going to go ahead and click in here put my equal sign in
and it's going to be it even suggests the right one if you don't know much about Google Sheets
I'll put a link to my Google Sheets tutorial here too so you can get more familiar with
that so check Below in the description up or up in the card I'm selecting this so we have 46 dollars
that's correct in this email sent we don't put anything because when we run the script it will
actually go through and tell me when it was sent in here and we'll stamp it through here okay so
we have our different fields across the top now we're ready to craft our email so I'm going to
go ahead and I'm just going to go over to my Gmail I already have one uh ready to go and we'll start
be we'll start putting in the information that we need to be able to send our our bulk email I just
want to point out too with this Google sheet you can change the name of this so if you don't want
it to be called copy go ahead and change that the other thing is to you can go ahead and move this
to a different location so if you do want it to go into a different folder in your Google Drive just
go ahead and make one and just put it where you would like okay so what I'm going to do I'm going
to work side by side here so I have on the left I have my Google Sheets and then I have a Gmail
a message new message to open so the first step is going to be this recipients here who is that
well this is where we need to be using the curly brackets or curly braces depending on what you
call them I'm just going to refer to them as the curly braces if you hear me talking about these I
need to start with two curly braces here what do I need to put in here it's going to be recipient
here I could type it in I could type it into here or I could just go back over here Ctrl C and go
back over here and Ctrl V and I need to close the bracket here so I'm just going to go ahead and put
that two more curly braces on so it knows when I send out my message it's going to go down these
are all the emails that it would send to I only have one in there so it's only going
to send to the one so the next thing is going to be the subject and we're going to use a few
more descriptors in here so I you could start typing regularly so if I was just going to say
upcoming fees for and what is it going to be well it's going to be the uh I want them to know that
the quantity and the description so if I have quite the quantity first I need to start with
my curly braces again here and if I look over I have quantity right here again I could copy
paste it or I could type it so I'm just going to go Ctrl C and Ctrl V and put my curly braces in
again and then I'm going to go ahead and give it a space because I want a space between the
number and the description so what's going to be what's it going to be quantity of what well it's
going to be descriptions so again I'm going to put my curly brackets or braces there and go over
here Ctrl C and just Ctrl V here and end my braces here to close it up so now I have my recipient and
my in my my subject line I can go ahead and craft my email now so you're usually going to be saying
hello to somebody and this is where using a mail merge is uh works so much easier and saves you so
much time if I say hello well who do I want to say hello to well do I want to say hello to first name
last name I could do that I could just do uh first name if I go all the way over here so what do I
want to say hello to well let's do uh well let's do our braces first here and we'll just type so
like I'm going to type in first name like this and just end my bracket so it's good would say hello
in this case it's going to say hello hairy because it's going to take what I have in the spreadsheet
and replace where I have all these fields putting in so I would go from there I can put a comma if I
wanted to have last name in I could do this but just remember to have a space in between first
name and last name then I can go ahead and craft an email here so I have this little email here you
recently indicated that you would like to purchase and I have quantity I have a space between here I
have description so it's going to pull this from the Google Sheets for a total of and this is
where it's going to pull from Total here so this part right here so it's going to look for a total
please submit payment by due date and I have due date it's going to pull from here so people could
have different quantity different due dates on it it's going to pull from each row in here so now I
can end my email I can just say thank you and now at this point we're ready to kind of get started
for sending but I don't send it from here what I need to do is make sure I have this this subject
because I'll need to be using it to find this email so I'm just going to go ahead and select
this and copy this Ctrl C and I'm going to go over to this and just make this larger and I'm going to
go ahead and choose mail merge now so when you go to mail merge for the first time it's going
to run the script and you have to authorize this so I'm going to hit continue and like I said since
it was coming from Google I didn't mind where it was uh where why I was using it I'm going to hit
my account I'm going to use and then I have to make sure I allow this if you want it to work
and then at that point I've gone through all those steps so I haven't sent anything yet now I have it
allowing to connect with my account if I go back to mail merge I can click on send emails this is
where I put the subject line so I'm just going to paste this uh so this is make sure if you're
typing this out you have the correct spaces because that's it would identify if I had Extra
Spaces it won't identify it so I just use the copy and paste so now I'm going to hit OK and it's
running the script and it's finished the script let's go over to this email that I have to see
what we got so here's the email that I received here in my account and I can show you a mistake
and so this is why it's always good to just send one as a test and notice it just says hello and
there's a comma let's look for other things it seems like the two school yearbooks this is all
correct you recently indicated that you like to purchase two school yearbooks for a total of 46
dollars please sub it your payment this all seems correct so what went wrong with this hello well I
have first name but I want to show you something here so I'm going to go back to the Google Sheets
here so with it open look at this right here last name and uh or sorry first name and we look
over here first name what's the difference well this does not have this is lowercase and I put
an uppercase so copying pasting I didn't copy and paste this one so just so you know I made
that mistake so you could see that so you would need to make sure that you correct this remember
this email that you are creating here this just saves as a draft on it so I've made the changes
to this if I go ahead and just maximize this so we can see this again notice it said the email
was sent here this is what happens after I run the script if I'm going to resend it I'm going
to actually delete this here and now let's let's go back again to mail merge and send that email
again we need to make sure we put our description in here so copy paste it over our subject line
I hit OK and it's going to run this and it's finished let's check that email one more time
so now I have the email open here and you can see it says hello Harry because I made that adjustment
in the email draft so I just wanted to point out make sure that you have the different fields named
correctly spaces and upper lowercase do matter with this all right I just want to show you one
more thing before we end this video here today I just want to emphasize make sure you don't delete
the draft of the email that you created because you do need that so make sure that stays in your
drafts now I'm just going to pop it back over to this right here the original site that I showed
you on and I just want to point out something for you to check out and that's going to be
on the quotas for the Google services here so uh just check this depending on what size of
business or how many emails and everything you're sending just check the limitations and everything
if this will match what you need it to do so I hope you like this walkthrough today of how to
use Google Sheets and Gmail for mail merge for free I found this like for myself it just that
worked very easily and worked well but check to see if those quotas will work for you thanks
for watching this time on teachers Tech I'll see you next time with more Tech tips and tutorials