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====== Mail merge for dummies ======
Mailmerge is a good way to make your mass-mailing seem more personal and appealing. It's not as difficult as you think, and it's a good skill to have.

(Mariëtte, you can thank me later. I used to get questions on how to mail merge all the time. Now it's easy for everyone to find out! -Quinten)

You need Outlook and Word installed on your computer to do this. It's not possible to mail merge through the webmail.

===== Without attachment =====
A normal mail merge can be executed in the following steps.

In Outlook:
  - Go to "account settings" and set the desired address to send from as default.
  - In options, go to the tab "Mail" and tick "Always use the default account when composing new messages" under "Send messages".
  - Close Outlook.

Then, in Word:
  - Under the tab "Mailings", go to "Start Mail Merge" and select "E-Mail Messages".
  - Go to "Select Recipients", "Use an Existing List", and load the sheet containing the data you want to merge on. Check if all data is correct by clicking "Edit Recipient List".
  - Type your e-mail.
  - If you want to include a merge field, like a name to use when addressing the recipient, click on "Insert Merge Field" and select the field you want to include.
  - When you're done writing, click "Finish and Merge" to send the e-mail.
  - Fill in the e-mail subject, select the recipient e-mail field to merge on, if Word can't detect it automatically, and press "Ok".
  - That's it!

Always send a test e-mail to yourself before you send out the entire batch, to check that the merged fields, addressing, and (in particular) the sending e-mail address are correct. Doing this is the only way to ensure that your e-mail will be sent correctly, such that you don't send a BarCo dinner invite to everyone from your personal e-mail, for example.

===== With attachment =====
Sending an mail merge with a file attachment is more involved than a normal mail merge. If at all possible, try to avoid this. Most of the time, the type of mail involving an attachment need not be personal at all, as it's often something like meeting minutes that is clearly addressed to a larger audience; no need to be personal there.

Instead, you can use {{ :vsvwiki:mergetools_-_2021.zip |this Word extension}}:
  - (First time only) Install the extension by extracting the .zip file to "C:\Users\<netid>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Word\STARTUP".
  - Ensure you have the same Outlook settings as required for a normal mail merge, to ensure that your e-mails are sent from the correct account.
  - In Word, you should now have a new ribbon, "Merge Tools".
  - Select "Merge with Attachments" and follow the instructions.

More information can be found in [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj_s3cdfVDY|this video]].

===== Printer labels =====
If you're sending any significant amount of (physical) mail and you don't want to write everything by hand, mail merge is your friend! You can instead print the recipients and their addresses on self-adhesive printer labels, and stick those on your envelopes. This works as follows:
  - Open Word.
  - Select "Start Mail Merge" and then "Labels" under the "Mailings" ribbon.
  - See if your label type's properties are already available in the list of products.
    * If it is, you're lucky: just choose it and you're good to go!
    * If it isn't, press "New Label" and put in the label's measurements. These are quite clearly stated on most label packages, often in the same format as they need to be input in Word.
  - Select the recipient list you want to take your names and addresses from.
  - Press "Edit Recipient List" to see if the list is imported as intended.
  - Edit the top left label to include all the information and merge fields you want.
  - Press "Update Labels" to copy all information from the top left label to the rest.
  - With printer labels in particular, it is quite important that you use "Preview Results" to check if all information is displayed correctly.
  - Put the printer labels in the "alternative" printer tray, and eject all other paper trays to ensure that the printer labels are used for printing. The printer should warn you if you do that, that means you've done it right.
  - (Do a test print of only one label sheet to be sure that you're not printing everything on the wrong side of the labels. Trust me, you only make this mistake once. Printer labels are expensive, and save the trees and all that.)
  - Print by pressing "Finish & Merge".
  - Print and rejoyce!
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