Mailing Labels and Outlook

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Ok, you have all these names in your contact database in Outlook. What can you do with them? Did you know you can send out form letters to all of them? Put them on Mailing Labels? Below are a few steps to make this happen. Practice makes perfect, just try this and some different things with the Mail Merge function…It could eventually save you some time…

These steps are only to show you where to find everything. You will have to cancel the menu to go back to make some choices that I mention below.

1. Open up your Contacts
2. Click “Tools” in top toolbar.
3. In the drop down you will see “Mail merge”

This will have your options on what you want to do next. Do you want labels or letters? I am going to explain labels. You can play with creating letters on your own. You can see you have a few choices in your Contact section. Do you want to create labels for everyone in your database or did you only have a few in mind? Document file? That’s for letters for the most part. (If you typed up a fabulous letter to one client and would like it to sent it others in your database, you would find and select it here)

Contact data file. Did you want to keep this group of contact, grouped together to use again? You will need to give it a name and a location to save. This does not remove them from your database, only makes a copy.

Merge options. This is where you make the choice of labels or letters. (envelopes or catalogs) Envelopes are similar to labels, but it prints right on the envelope. Merge to… New document. If you save to a new document you can retrieve the document later and print more labels. The other options are printer and email. They go straight to the printer or email, as they suggest.

OK, cancel out of this. Now you know what you questions to ask yourself… What am I doing and who am I sending it to?

You can see I categorize my contacts. (a little OCD) I think it makes it easier to view. In this case I want to send something to all of the Home Inspectors in my Contact database. I click on the first one in the list and then hold the SHIFT button and click the bottom one. That selects the whole list. You can sporadically select contacts by holding the CTRL button while clicking the contact. Now you have them selected go back to the Tools>Mail merge menu. You then need to select “Only selected Contacts” and all fields. Drop down to the bottom and select Mailing Labels. Click OK and then it will open up Microsoft Word. You will have a pop up telling you select “Setup” on the next window. When you select “Set up” it will be looking for what type of labels will you be printing to. Most common is Avery 5160. This in the 3 wide and 10 high sheets of labels. Now click “Close” at the bottom.

Next, you can start making the labels look like you want. You should now be looking at a blank sheet with the cursor blinking in the upper left hand side. This is label number one. This will be the only one you work on. Here you will set the Font, the color, the format for the rest of them. Make up your mind NOW before you proceed…It is much easier going thru this once than having to back and fix.

Above is the tool bars on your document. The bottom one should be used for your merged data. Hoover over top of each button. Here you should see one that says “Address Block” This is the quickest way to build the list. Otherwise click “Insert Merged Fields” and insert the data fields that you want to be on the mailing label. YOU WILL NEED TO FORMAT THE LABEL AS YOU WERE TYPING IT. Like spaces between first name and last name. Enter after the names and enter after the property address. Commas after the city and spaces after the State. The “Address Block” will show you this menu.

Pick and choose what fields you want on the address block. The example will show in the preview window. IF YOU DON’T WANT THE CUSTOMERS NAME, uncheck the block. But now you will have to type either… Current Resident, Neighbor or Friend etc. On the line above ((Address Block))

Now does it look like you want? If not, change it. Next find the button that says “propagate labels” Wahlah!!! If you click the “view merged data” button and you will see what your labels will look like. Next you will need to print. Click Merge to New Document button on the Mail Merge tool bar. It will create a document of labels with all of your data on it. It will give you the option to merge all of the data or certain number of labels. When you are done you can save this file and print again later.

Play around and see what you can create. This will not ruin your database in your Contact list.

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