📎 This article includes 2 downloadable practice files ↓

📘 Word Beginner Course · Lesson 6 of 10

Fifty dealers need a payment reminder with their own name, firm and outstanding amount. Copy-paste-edit fifty times and someone gets another dealer’s figure. Mail merge writes the letter once and fills each person’s details from an Excel list.

What you need

• An Excel list with one header row and one row per recipient: Name, Firm, City, Outstanding.
• A letter in Word with blanks where the details go.

Step by step

1. Mailings › Start Mail Merge › Letters.
2. Select Recipients › Use an Existing List › choose the Excel file › pick the sheet (Dealers$) › OK.
3. Click where the name goes, Insert Merge Field › Name. Repeat for Firm, City, Outstanding. Fields appear as «Name».
4. Preview Results: arrows step through each dealer’s letter.
5. Finish & Merge › Edit Individual Documents creates one long document with every letter, ready to check and print. Or Print Documents directly.

Fix number and date formats

Merged amounts often show as 128500 or with odd decimals, and dates in US format. Right-click the field › Toggle Field Codes and add a format switch:

{ MERGEFIELD Outstanding \# "#,##0" }          → 1,28,500 style needs Excel text; this gives 128,500
{ MERGEFIELD Outstanding \# "#,##0.00" }       → 128,500.00
{ MERGEFIELD DueDate \@ "dd-MMM-yyyy" }        → 31-Oct-2026

Toggle back and preview. For Indian lakh grouping, create a text column in Excel with =TEXT(D2,"##,##,##0") and merge that instead.

Choose who gets it

Edit Recipient List: untick rows, or use Filter (e.g. Outstanding greater than 10000) and Sort (by City for easier dispatch).

Personalise with IF

Rules › If…Then…Else adds text only for some recipients, e.g. “Please note this amount is over 90 days old” when an Overdue column says Yes.

Email and labels

• Email: Finish & Merge › Send Email Messages, choose the Email column and subject. It sends through Outlook, one email each. Test by sending to yourself first.
• Labels and envelopes: Start Mail Merge › Labels, pick the label brand and size, insert the address block, then Update Labels to fill the sheet.

Where beginners go wrong

More: Word mail merge from Excel.

Practice

Download the practice document below. It has the letter plus a small Excel dealer list. The task list is at the top of the document; tick each one off as you go.