Excel is an incredibly handy tool for organizing a mailing list, but it’s not so great when it comes to printing the labels. Typing in all the information you’ve already entered would take some time – but luckily you can have your cake and eat it too. Today we’re going to show you how to create and print address labels from Excel with a little help from Microsoft Word and the mail merge feature.
Print labels from Excel – it’s easy
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Although Excel’s built-in functionality isn’t ideal for creating labels, the beauty of the Microsoft Office suite is its cross-compatibility. If both applications are installed, you can quickly and automatically import your Excel spreadsheet data into Word and display it in an organized way for printing.
Two things should be noted before we begin. First, although the tutorial focuses on address labels, it can be modified to work with any label. Second, you’ll need to properly configure your columns in Excel to make it as seamless as possible. We will discuss this in the first step:
How to Print Labels from Excel
Before you can create labels from Excel, you will need your existing mailing list in the app. If you don’t have one, you can create one now.
- Prepare your mailing list
The important thing to remember is that you need to create a column header noting the information that will go into each header. This will help you map your fields to the correct columns later.
For example, in ours, we will use the Property Name, Operator Name, Address, City, State, Zip Code, and Country fields. If you’re using your tags for a mailing list, you can include header tags like first name, last name, and title.
Once everything has been prepared with the correct column headings, you can save your work and move on to the next step to create labels from Excel.
- How to Send Mailing Labels from Excel
Open the “Mailings” Word ribbon tab and select “Start Mail Merge > Labels…”. The Mail Merge feature will allow you to easily create labels and import data into them from a spreadsheet.
- Select your label options and press “OK”
- Press “Sending > Select recipients > Use an existing list…”
- Navigate to your mailing list file, select it and press “Open”
- Select the name of your sheet, check “First row of data contains column headers” and press “OK”
- Open the “Sendings” tab in your Word ribbon and click on “Address Block”
- Press “Match Fields…” in the “Insert Address Block” window
- In the “Required for address block” section, match the fields to your column names
If they don’t line up exactly, that’s okay. In our case, for example, “Property name” and “Operator name” replace first and last name. hurry “OKAY” once you have finished.
- Check the preview in the “Insert address block” window and check the preview
If you’re happy with it, press “OKAY”. Otherwise, you may need to edit your fields again.
- Check if “AddressBlock” appears in your first label
- If so, open the “Shipments” tab again and press the green “Update labels” button
AddressBlock will now appear in all your labels.
- Make your final mail merge
Open the “Mailings” tab again and click “Finish and Merge”, then “Edit individual documents…”.
- Check “All” in the “Merge with new document” window and press “OK”
- Print your address labels
With all your addresses imported, you can finally print your labels and send your mail. Don’t forget to save the document in case you need to reprint one of them.
How to combine text cells in Excel and create page landscape in Word
Now that you know how to print labels from Excel, maybe you want to get the most out of your Office applications. If so, check out our existing tutorials on how to combine text cells in Excel and create a page landscape in Word.
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