Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new Mail Merge feature in Pages.
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So there's a new update to Pages and you can use it to do a Mail Merge. This was a feature that we
had a long time ago in a previous incarnation of Pages and now it's back. Check to make sure
you have the latest version of Pages. It's version 12.1 which you can only get if you have macOS Big
Sur or newer. Now the simplest way to see this in action is to use a template that uses addresses.
So let's go down here to the Envelopes Section and I'll choose, say, Classic Envelope. You can see
here you've got your return address and you have the address who you're sending the letter to. You
can use this to print an envelope if your printer can take envelopes. Now, of course, you can just
type what you want in here. That's what you would normally do. But now you can use Mail Merge to
print a set of envelopes. To do this you would go to Document on the right and then at the bottom
of Document, all the way down here in the sidebar, is Mail Merge. Click that and now you're going to
see Mail Merge options here. You're going to see each field and you'll see them highlighted here.
So you can see the green one matched to green. You've got the full name and address right here
and you could click one and you can see it indicates which one it is. Then you also have
this full name and address for the person that the envelope is addressed to.
Now the data for the Mail Merge can come from one of two places.
The first is the Contacts App and the second is a Numbers spreadsheet. So if we're going to do the
Contacts App what you want to do is click Merge right here, stick with Contacts here on the left
and then you could assign each one of these to a different field in Contacts. You could also
choose a Group or all of your contacts. I'm going to switch to the Contacts App here and you could
see I've got all these contacts and I don't want to send to everybody. But I've created a Group
called Friends and I've add it to the Contacts here. You can create Groups by going to File,
New Group and create it that way and then Drag and Drop to add into the group there. So I have
four different contacts and I can check to make sure that they do all indeed have
an address right here as the home address and then of course the name is filled out.
So if I select that group here, you can see it says 4 records,
and you can map what you want to each field. So, in this case yes for the sender I do want it to
use the home address and the full name and that's coming from the Contacts App
from the card designated as your card. So this one selected here if it didn't have that little icon
there I could make it my card by going to Card, Make This My Card. So that is where it gets the
Sender information from. Then for these I can map them to any field in the Contacts App I want. But
in this case it guesses right the first time. I can Preview here and it can show me for each card
what it's going to use. So here's the sender name and address and I can see the first name
and address and I can flip through each one and check to make sure they all look good.
Now to perform the Mail Merge I simply click Merge here. What it is going to do is it's going
to create a new document. So notice I have two documents open now. The original one, which is
the template, and this new one which actually now has four pages, or four envelopes, here. Each one
customized with a different address. I can still go in and change something right there. It's all
editable. But if I got the addresses right and everything looks good I can now go and Print.
There are other templates that work as well. As you can imagine you can go
and use Letters right here, I'll use Classic Letter. If I go to document here down to the
bottom is Mail Merge. Here I've got address. It also includes phone number, email address,
and all that from my card there. Then all of these other fields here including the first name there.
Even at the bottom it's got the name there at the bottom from the sender. I can click Merge here,
choose Contacts, choose from which Group here, it shows four records. I can preview each one
and see what it's getting. Then I can click Merge and it would merge to create a document with four
pages now. Each one with a different address right here.
You could also go down here to some new templates, Cards, and use one of these. So, for instance,
let's go and select this Celebration Event one and it will load it in. Then when I look under
Document, Mail Merge, it will show me all of the different mail merge fields. So you can see this
is kind of a card. It's got this one side here that's got the address information on it. Then
it's got email on the first page here and first name, and all of that. So it will merge all of
these fields together. I click here. I can adjust which field is used for each thing.
Now you can also use the Numbers spreadsheet for the data. Which is really handy if you
want to use this professionally. If you're a teacher and want to use it with a list of
students or if this is for work and you want to use it with a list of employees or peers,
you can just create that list in Numbers. So here I've got a Name, Street, City, State, and Zip.
I'm going to need to combine all of these so I'm going to add another column right here
and call this Address. Then you can customize this really well with a formula. I'll use
Equals to start the formula. I'll start with the Street Address and then ampersand
to concatenate the next piece. Quote Option Return goes to the next line. Close Quote
and then an ampersand and then City and then ampersand with a comma space, in the quotes, then
State and then ampersand with just a space in the quotes and then zip. This will give an address
that looks like that. We can expand that a little bit. I'll Copy and I'll Paste it here. This gives
you can idea of some of the work you may need to do in advance to get the spreadsheet ready. You
can name this Table something like I named this one List. I've named the spreadsheet Addresses.
Now I've got this spreadsheet right here. Let's go back into Pages and let me go back to the Classic
Envelope here. Let's do Document and then Mail Merge. But this time when I click
merge I'm going to switch to Spreadsheet. I'm going to choose this spreadsheet here.
It will allow me to choose which Table I'm using. So if I have multiple tables here.
You can see now it is still going to take my address and name from my Contact. But the other
name and address, the one for each envelope, that I need to select here. So I'll select the name
column and you can see how it pulls the column names from this table. So I'll select Name and
I'll select Address here. Now I can preview and I could see what each one is going to look like and
Merge. Now you can see I've got an envelope for each name and address in that spreadsheet.
Now you don't have to settle for just the templates that are there. You can create
your own templates to use with Mail Merge. I'm going to use a blank document here. Let's go and
show the layout here. I'm going to Insert right here in this blank document a field to be used
for Mail Merge. So we can do that either under Insert, Mail Merge Field and pick one of these.
There's a lot you can pick from. You can also go to Document to Mail Merge and then Add Merge Field
and do the same thing here. So, for instance, I can pick Full Name and add that there. Return.
I can pick Address Home and add that there. Now I can use those fields to do a Mail Merge. So I can
take this right here. Merge. I can pick the spreadsheet, choose that same one. Pick Name,
Pick Address, Merge. Now I get a very simple document here where every page is just the
name and address. I could also put those inside of text boxes or shapes. So I create a text box here.
I'll erase what's in there. I'll insert a Mail Merge field. Put Full Name like that and now I
can do the merge the same way but now I've got something that I can customize and move around.
One bug I've noticed is that this does work in both word processing mode and Page Layout Mode
but you need to start and add everything you want while in word processing mode
and then you can switch to Page Layout and it will work just fine at that point.
BUT after you switch to Page Layout if you add another field, I'll go ahead and add
say phone right here, it doesn't ever seem to do it. You can see it's not added there
no matter how many times I go back it doesn't recognize this as a new mail merge field. Probably
just a bug that will be fixed at some point. So do everything in word processing mode even if when
you're done you want to switch to Page Layout mode for the final template that you're going to use.
Now you don't have to use this for just names, addresses, and information about people. You
could use it for just about anything although these fields you insert are always going to refer
to things that are about people. But let me show you an example of how you can, say,
make flashcards. So let's go and create a simple flashcard template here. I'm going
to add some text. I'm going to make this the question and let's style it a bit. I'll make it
larger, bold, to the right, and center it like that. That's the question.
Then you're going to fold the piece of paper over and at the bottom will be the answer. Like that.
Let's go ahead and select question there and insert a Mail Merge field. Let's just call this
First Name. Let's select this one and insert a Mail Merge field and call this Last Name. Now
let's flip this one over. So I'm going to go to Arrange and Rotate it 180 degrees. So now you've
got something you can use as a flashcard. You can just fold this piece of paper over like that.
Now in Numbers I've created this simple spreadsheet with a simple table here
with just eight different facts that can go onto a flashcard.
I've named the columns like this. I've named the table. Now if I go to Document and then Merge
you could see there's First Name and Last Name. We had to use those kinds of names there even though
these really have nothing to do with a person's name. Then from Spreadsheet here I can change to
select Flashcards.Numbers. There's only one Table. I can set the first name to be the fact and the
last name to be the planet. Merge. Now you can see I end up with an eight page document here.
Each one being a different flashcard taking the data from that Numbers spreadsheet.
So you really can use this in all sorts of interesting different ways that don't necessarily
apply to people or, in fact, Mail Merge. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.