Summary

Mail Merge lets you create personalised letters, labels, envelopes, or emails by combining a Word template with a data source (typically an Excel spreadsheet). Instead of manually editing each document, Mail Merge automatically inserts names, addresses, and other details from your spreadsheet. This article walks through the entire process step by step.

Before You Start

• Microsoft Word and Excel (desktop apps).
• An Excel spreadsheet with data organised in rows and columns with headers.
• No admin rights required.

Instructions

1. Prepare Your Excel Data Source

Ensure your data is clean and structured.

1. Open your Excel spreadsheet.
2. Verify the following:
   • Row 1 contains column headers (e.g., First Name, Last Name, Address, City, Postcode).
   • Each row below contains one record per recipient.
   • There are no blank rows within the data.
   • There are no merged cells.
3. Save and close the Excel file.

2. Start the Mail Merge in Word

Set up the merge document.

1. Open Word and create a new blank document (or open an existing template).
2. Click the Mailings tab on the ribbon.
3. Click Start Mail Merge and choose the document type:
   • Letters — Personalised letters.
   • E-mail Messages — Personalised emails.
   • Envelopes — Pre-addressed envelopes.
   • Labels — Mailing labels.
4. For this guide, select Letters. To send the merge as email instead, select E-mail Messages — sections 3 and 4 are identical, and section 6 covers what changes at the finish.

Note: Labels follow a different path from here — you pick a label vendor and product number, and you must click Update Labels or only the first label on the sheet fills. See How to Print Address Labels with Mail Merge in Word for the full label workflow.

3. Connect to Your Excel Data Source

Link the Word document to your spreadsheet.

1. On the Mailings tab, click Select Recipients > Use an Existing List.
2. Browse to and select your Excel file.
3. In the Select Table dialog, choose the worksheet or named range containing your data.
4. Ensure First row of data contains column headers is checked.
5. Click OK. Word is now connected to your Excel data.

4. Insert Merge Fields

Place placeholders in your document that pull data from Excel.

1. Position your cursor where you want personalised data to appear.
2. On the Mailings tab, click Insert Merge Field.
3. Select a field from the dropdown (e.g., First_Name, Last_Name, Address).
4. The field appears as «First_Name» in the document.
5. Repeat for each piece of data you want to personalise.
6. Type the surrounding text as normal (e.g., "Dear «First_Name»,").

5. Preview and Complete the Merge

Review the merged documents before printing or sending.

1. On the Mailings tab, click Preview Results.
2. Use the record navigation arrows to scroll through each merged document.
3. Verify that names, addresses, and other fields display correctly.
4. When satisfied, click Finish & Merge and choose:
   • Edit Individual Documents — Creates a new Word document with all merged letters (recommended for review).
   • Print Documents — Sends all merged letters directly to the printer.
   • Send E-mail Messages — Sends personalised emails. This option only does anything if you chose E-mail Messages as the merge type in step 2. See section 6.

6. Send the Merge as Individual Emails

An email merge uses the same spreadsheet and the same merge fields as a letter, and differs only at the start and at the finish.

Two things have to be true before you begin. Word hands the finished messages to a MAPI-compatible email program — Outlook on almost every work machine — so Outlook must be installed and set as your default email program. And your spreadsheet needs a column holding one email address per recipient.

1. In step 2, choose E-mail Messages from the Start Mail Merge menu instead of Letters. Sections 3 and 4 then run exactly as written: connect the same spreadsheet, insert the same merge fields, and write the message body in the Word document as normal.
2. On the Mailings tab, click Preview Results and arrow through several records. This is the last look at real names in real sentences before anything leaves your mailbox.
3. Send a test to yourself, every time. Add one row to your spreadsheet with your own name and email address, reconnect the list, then click Edit Recipient List and clear every checkbox except your own row. Run the merge, read what arrives, then re-tick everyone and delete the test row. This is the step that catches a broken merge field before 200 people read Dear «First_Name».
4. Click Finish & Merge > Send E-mail Messages. The Merge to E-mail dialog opens.
5. Set To to the spreadsheet column holding the email addresses. Word lists your column headers in this dropdown, so check you are picking the address column and not a name column that happens to sit next to it.
6. Type the subject in the Subject line box. There is one subject box for the whole merge, so everyone receives the same subject — the personalisation lives in the body of the message.
7. Leave Mail format set to HTML, which is the default and keeps your formatting. Choose Plain text only if you want the formatting stripped.
8. Under Send records, choose All, Current record, or a From and To range. A range lets you send in batches and check the first batch landed before releasing the rest.
9. Click OK. Word passes the messages to Outlook, which sends them from your mailbox. They appear in your Sent Items folder as separate messages, one per recipient.

Know what this can and cannot do before you plan anything around it:

• Every recipient gets their own message. Word sends an individual email to each address, and there is no CC or BCC, so nobody sees who else is on the list.
• You cannot attach a file. Microsoft's documentation is explicit that a merge to email can include links but not attachments. Put the file in OneDrive or SharePoint and paste a share link into the message body instead.
• It sends through your own mailbox, so your mailbox limits apply. Exchange Online's recipient rate limit is 10,000 recipients per day, your organisation may set a lower one, and Microsoft's own guidance is that Exchange Online is not built for bulk mailing. A department announcement is well within this. A marketing list is the wrong tool.
• These are ordinary emails from you. Recipients' spam filters treat them exactly like any other message you send, and a sudden large send to external addresses is the pattern those filters watch for.
• There is no tracking. Word reports nothing back — no opens, no delivery confirmations, no failure list. Check Sent Items to confirm the messages went, and watch your own inbox for bounces.

Troubleshooting

DANGER

Always preview the merge results before printing or sending. Check for missing data, extra spaces, and formatting issues — especially with postal codes and phone numbers that may lose leading zeros.

Symptom / Error	Potential Cause	Solution
Merge fields show field codes instead of data	Preview Results not enabled	Click Mailings > Preview Results to toggle the data preview on.
Leading zeros are missing (e.g., postcode 01234 shows as 1234)	Excel stored the column as numbers	In Excel, format the postcode column as Text before connecting it to the merge.
"Data source not found" error	Excel file was moved or renamed	Re-connect the data source via Mailings > Select Recipients > Use an Existing List and browse to the correct file.
Send E-mail Messages does nothing, or is unavailable	Merge type is not E-mail Messages, or no default email program is set	Go back to Start Mail Merge and choose E-mail Messages (step 2). If the option is still dead, Outlook is not set as your default email program — set it in Settings > Apps > Default apps on Windows.
The emails sit in the Outbox and never send	Outlook is working offline	On the Send / Receive tab in Outlook, check whether Work Offline is switched on and click it to go back online. The queued messages then send.
Every email says "Dear «First_Name»"	Merge fields were sent instead of data	The merge was completed without connecting the data source, or the field names no longer match the spreadsheet headers. Reconnect the list (step 3), re-insert the fields, and send yourself a test before resending (section 6).

Related Articles

• How to Print Address Labels with Mail Merge in Word
• How to Use Find and Replace in Office
• How to Use XLOOKUP in Excel
• How to Co-author Documents in Office

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