eMail Merge

eMail merge is an amazing productive feature that I first discovered using Office 2007, but I cannot replicate the procedure on the Mac.  A colleague, who is a Mac user, asked about how she could send out 50+ emails efficiently.  Unfortunately, I could not find the feature on the Mac in either Office 2008 or Pages :(

eMail merge is available in Office 2010 and 2007.  It is easiest to first create a file (it can be a Excel spreadsheet, Word table, or Access table) with column headers with data that is appropriate for the email. For example, FirstName, LastName, email, Event, Date.  Although you can save that file in a place of your choice, I recommend that you save the file in the folder, My Data Sources.

Switch to Microsoft Word.  Write the email.  Note, you can use digital stationary to format your email professionally.  Do the following:

• Select the data source
• Select the recipients from the data source (all are selected by default)
• Write the email including any merge fields that are needed
• Preview the email results
• Click on Finish and Merge and select > Send email messages

Each recipient will receive the personalized copy of the email.  This process can be used with any standard email that you send to more than one person, for example, it can be used to send flyers to several hundred others. It is a powerful, efficient way to communicate information with others.