Excel is an incredibly handy tool for organizing a mailing list, but it’s not so great when it comes to actually printing the labels. Typing out all of the information you have already entered would be time-consuming – but thankfully you can have your cake and eat it too. Today we’ll be showing you how to make 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
Though Excel’s built-in functionality isn’t great for label making, the beauty of the Microsoft Office suite is its cross-compatibility. If you have both applications installed, you can quickly and automatically import the data from your Excel spreadsheet into Word and have it displayed in an organized manner for printing.
It’s worth noting two things before we start. Firstly, though the tutorial will focus on address labels, it can be modified to work with any label. Secondly, you will have to set your columns up properly in Excel to make this as seamless as possible. We’ll discuss this in the first step:
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How to Print Labels from Excel
Before you can create labels from Excel, you’ll need your existing mailing list in the application. If you don’t have one, you can create one now.
- Prepare your mailing list
The important thing to remember is that you must create a column header noting the information that will go in each heading. This will help you to match your fields to the correct columns later on.
For example, in ours we’ll be using the fields property name, operator name, address, city, state, zip code, and country. If you’re using your labels for a mailing list, you may want to include heading labels like first name, last name, and title.
Once everything has been prepared with the correct column headers, you can save your work and continue to the next step to create labels from Excel.
- How to mail merge labels from Excel
Open the “Mailings” tab of the Word ribbon and select “Start Mail Merge > Labels…”. The mail merge feature will allow you to easily create labels and import data to them from a spreadsheet application.
- Select your label options and press “OK”
- Press “Mailings > Select Recipients > Use an Existing List…”
- Browse to your mailing list file, select it, and press “Open”
- Select your sheet name, tick “First row of data contains column headers” and press “OK”
- Open the “Mailings” tab in your Word ribbon and click “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 fine. In our case, for example, “Property Name” and “Operator Name” take the place of first and last name. Press “OK” when you’re done.
- Check the preview in the “Insert Address Block” window and check the preview
If you’re happy with it, press “OK”. Otherwise, you may need to modify your fields again.
- Check whether “AddressBlock” appears in your first label
- If it does, open the “Mailings” tab again and press the green “Update labels” button
AddressBlock will now appear in all of your labels.
- Perform your final mail merge
Open the “Mailings” tab again and click on “Finish & Merge”, then “Edit Individual Documents…”.
- Tick “All” in the “Merge to New Document” window and press “OK”
- Print your address labels
With all of your addresses imported, you can finally print your labels and send off your mail. Remember to save the document in case you need to reprint any of them.
How to Combine Text Cells in Excel and Make a Page Landscape in Word
Now that you know how to print labels from Excel, you may be eager to get even more out of your Office applications. If that’s the case, check out our existing tutorials on how to combine text cells in Excel and how to make a page landscape in Word.
