Imagine that you have hundreds of customer addresses for shipping listed on a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. If you want to print out each address on your labels, there are two ways to go about this. First, is to hire a professional company that makes custom labels designs for products to do the job. The results will likely be satisfactory, but you have to pay the company for its service.

Woman-arranging-data-in-excel

Now, if you’re working on a tight budget or want to lower costs, a DIY approach may be ideal. This method involves making an address label sheet in Microsoft Word. You then copy and paste each address from Excel to the label sheet and print out the document. Just look for the step by step procedure on how to mail merge address labels from Excel.

While this method may sound pretty straightforward, in reality, it is very painstaking and time-consuming. And if you want to print out hundreds or thousands of address labels, you surely need a more efficient method.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this problem, and that is through Mail Merge. Today, I am going to show you how to use Mail Merge on Word and greatly simplify the process of printing address labels.

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Creating Address Labels efficiently using Mail Merge

It’s important to note that you can use any version of Microsoft Word for this task. Whether it’s the latest version or an older one, it doesn’t matter so long as it has Mail Merge. Now that we are clear on this let’s start by using these six easy steps in making Microsoft Office address labels with Mail Merge.

Creating-Address-Labels-Efficiently-using-Mail-Merge

1.

Launch Mail Merge from Word

  • Run Microsoft Word from your computer and start a New or Blank document.
  • Click on Mailings from the Menu Bar at the top of the page.
  • Click on the Start Mail Merge drop-down section and select the Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard option located at the bottom of the list. 

2.

Start a Document

After launching Mail Merge Wizard, a command panel titled “Mail Merge” will appear at the right-hand corner. This panel will allow you to select the type of document you want to use.

  • Under the “Select document type” section, choose Labels and then click on Next: Starting document at the bottom of Mail Merge.
  • You’ll have a set of choices on how to set up your letters. Select the option that says “Change document layout” and then click on Label options below.
  • A window titled “label options” will pop up on your screen. The first thing you need to do is to select the type of printer that you are using on the “Printer Information” section. If you are using a standard printer, select Page printers. Next, go to the “Label information” section and select Microsoft as your option in the list of label vendors.
  • Finally, select the product number of your label under the “Product number” list. The information on the label you choose, which includes the type, height, width, and page size, will appear at the right. Make sure that the information matches the label that you are using. In this demonstration, we will be choosing 30 per page as our label option.
  • Click OK after making the selections.

3.

Select your Recipients

Now that your label options are complete, click on the Next: Select recipients at the bottom of Mail Merge. Please make sure that the Excel sheet that lists your recipients is ready on your computer before we begin.

  • Go to the “Use an existing list” section in Mail Merge. This section will allow you to use names and addresses from a file or database. Click on Browse and double-click on the file that has your recipients. Click OK after selecting the file.
  • All the addresses from the file will be pulled in and displayed on a window titled “Mail Merge Recipient.” This window will automatically pop up on your screen.

In the Mail Merge window, you have the option to uncheck the boxes of those addresses that you wish to exclude. You can also use the Sort, Filter, Find Duplicate, Find Recipient, and Validate Addresses, functions for your convenience. After you are done making the necessary changes, click on OK.

4.

Arrange your Labels

You should now be able to see all your address labels arranged on a sheet (30 labels per sheet) in the Word document. Click on the Next: Arrange your names at the bottom of Mail Merge.

  • Under the “Arrange your labels section,” click on Address Block, and a window titled “Insert Address Block” will pop up on your screen.
  • Check if all your recipients present and that all their corresponding information is accurate. After checking, click OK.

At this point, Windows has now completed looking into the Excel data and identifying that those various columns form an address block. If you look at the three-column label sheet in the Word document, though, only the first column has the address block while the other two don’t.

  • What you should do next is to click on the Update all labels button under the “Replicate labels section” in Mail Merge. This action will allow you to copy the layout of the first label to the other labels on the page.

After clicking the Update all labels button, the second and third label column will change to “Next Record Address Block.” The “Next Record” means that it will continue to the next row in your spreadsheet and include the next person and his/her address block. It will do this for the entire label sheet in the Word document.

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5.

Preview your Labels

To ensure that everything is accurate and in proper order, click on the Next: Preview your Labels at the bottom of Mail Merge. This action will allow you to view the names and addresses in every label in your sheet. Scroll down and see if everything is correct. You can also make changes by clicking on the Edit recipient list option.

6.

Complete the Merge

When you finish previewing your labels and making all the necessary changes, click on Next: Complete Merge at the bottom of Mail Merge. Now you can print the merged labels or edit each one to add your comments.

  • In this step, there are two options: Print or Edit individual labels. If you want to personalize each one, click on Edit Individual Labels. This action will open a new document with your merged labels. To make changes on all of them, switch back to the original document.
  • After making the necessary editing or if you don’t want to make any changes on your labels, click on the Print option.
  • A small window named “Merge to Printer” will pop up on your screen. Select the option that you need, whether it’s all of the records, just the current record, or a specific range from the excel sheet. After selecting an option, click OK.
  • A window will pop up on your screen, displaying the print settings. Configure the settings according to your needs then click on OK to start printing.

Final Thoughts

The address labels you put on your products speaks volumes about your business or company. Offering a package labeled with an ordinary self-adhesive paper and marker may create a poor impression. You can show your customers that your products are of good quality and that your company is reliable by establishing a professional feel.

The easiest and most effective way to boost professionalism is by creating custom address labels. And there’s no need to pay a fortune on hiring companies that provide custom label designs for products. You can create custom address labels and do it for free using Microsoft Word and Excel. With the help of this guide and the right size blank labels, you can label your products efficiently, even on a budget!

Frequently Asked Questions

Excel files are supposed to be used as sources for creating labels in Word through the mail merge process. But if you are like other people who hate Word, there is another way you can print labels directly from Excel. Take note, though, that you won’t get many customization options via this method compared to doing it in Word.

Below are the sample steps in creating the most common label size found in offices which is Avery 5160 that measures 1″ x 2 5/8″:

  1. Download this excel file.
  2. Enable macros.
  3. Paste a single column data in 1A.
  4. Activate the macro by pressing CTRL+e.
  5. A dialog will pop up asking you the number of columns you desire. Enter 3.
  6. Set custom margins and enter the details below:
    • Top and Bottom: 0.5
    • Left and Right: 0.21975
  7. For the scaling, choose Fit all Columns on One Page.

There is really no mail merge function in Excel but you can automate the process via Excel VBA without the need to use Word. If you want to give this a try, you can find the steps and the code needed here.

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