The Outlook feature known as “mail merge” simplifies composing and sending individual emails to a big group of people. Mail merge makes it simple to customise the message for each recipient, whether you’re sending an email blast to consumers or staff.

We’ll need a content-generating Word document and a list of recipients to set up a mail merge. The latter option might use your Outlook contacts or an Excel list. In this article, we’ll go through the details of both approaches.

This article aims to provide an overview of outlook mail merge. Here are the detailed instructions on composing and sending a mail merge.

[ Also Read: How to Fix Outlook Send Receive Error]

What is Mail Merge?

Using a database, spreadsheet, or other structured paperwork, mail merge allows for creating personalise bulk emails for many recipients.

You create a message template with blanks where relevant information should go, and a mail merge will replace those blanks with the recipient’s actual information (name, email address, etc.).

You obtain more interaction, and the recipients feel special since you took the time to tailor your message to their specific needs.

Mail Merge in Outlook

We can quickly and easily send customised emails to a big group of people using a mail merge. You should use placeholders to personalise the email’s contents (the greeting, address block, etc.). So, we need two things to use outlook email mail merge to send out an email blast:

• A directory of resources
• The correspondence to be sent

We may begin the mail merge immediately if all your contacts are already in Outlook. After selecting or filtering the recipients, we can build or choose the desire Word document to utilise as the email’s body. Here are the steps for how to do outlook mail merge:

Step 1: Pick your Outlook contacts

The initial step is to pick the Outlook contacts to work with. Selecting a small subset of contacts from a long list can be done quickly by holding down the Ctrl key while clicking on the names you desire.

Use a filter on your list of contacts. Imagine you have something important to tell everyone at a particular firm. In Outlook, we can do this by making a filter specific to the company’s name.

• When Outlook’s contact list is open, select View > View Settings > Contacts. To use the filter,
• Select the field labelled firm and type in the firm name;
• Then click OK twice.

Your contact list has been filtered only to show those that pass your criteria.

Step 2: Initiate the Mail Merge Process 

Once we have sort and select the appropriate contacts, we can do outlook mail merge email. You may find the mail merge in the Home tab of the ribbon.

If you’re working with the compact ribbon, choose Mail Merge from the options presented by clicking the three dots (an eclipse) in its upper right corner.

When you select mail merge, a dialogue box will open. Here, we may pick the recipients, compose the email’s text, and decide where to send the merged data.

• If you’ve filtered your contacts or want to email everyone on your list, pick all contacts in the current view. Otherwise, select “Only selected contacts.”
• If you already have a Word document prepared, you can use that instead. If not, select “New Document” from the file menu.
• The settings can be saved and used later in the contact data file.
• To access further customisation choices, click Merge to Email and provide a subject heading.
• Select merging to Email from the list of merging choices and enter a subject line for the email. However, you’ll only end up duplicating contact information in Word documents.

Step 3: Compose the email’s body

Select the Mailings tab in Word. You can find the buttons to insert the merging fields in the middle of the menu.

Greeting Line

We’ll begin by inserting the greeting line as a merge field. Position the cursor where you’d like to add the greeting. Select Greeting Line under the Mailings menu.

The greeting line formatting dialogue box will pop up. The preview of the outcome is displayed in the dialogue box.

Select the “OK” option after finishing the formatting. Greeting Line is now available as a merge field in your document.

Address Block

The addresses of the staff members must be double-checked for accuracy. We can use an address block for this purpose. You should customise the address block in the same way that the greetings line is.

Select the appropriate fields from your contact by clicking Match Fields if there are any mismatches. However, when you click OK, a blank space will appear where you can type new text.

Other Merge Fields

To further customise our document, we can add additional merging fields. However, here, Outlook serves as the repository for our data. Therefore, we can only choose from Outlook-compatible fields. Let’s pretend we’re adding the company’s name to the letter:

The steps for inserting the firm name are as follows:

• Position the cursor where you want it to appear;
• From the menu, select Insert Merge Field
• Select a Company from the drop-down menu.

Step 4: Examine the Output

We need to double-check the mail merge’s outcome before sending the email. You can use the Preview Results option in the menu ribbon.

Step 5: Sending the Outlook Mail Merge

With the document finish and the merge fields in place, we can now email everyone on our list. Select Send Email Messages from the Finish & Merge option.

The final step is checking that the To address is identical to the one in the contact, subject line, and message format. Select yes to proceed with sending customise emails to the contacts.

Outlook’s Sent Items list will show that each message was successfully delivered to its intended recipients.

Outlook Mail Merge with Attachment

By default, Outlook prevents you from including outlook mail merge attachments. You’ll need to use either plugins or a workaround to stop Outlook from sending the email until we’ve had a chance to attach the file manually.

This choice is practical only when there are few people to send to. We’ll prevent Outlook from sending emails by putting it into offline mode. You can turn off the offline mode after attaching each email.

• Select Work Offline from Outlook’s Send/Receive menu.
• Make sure to follow them when making your mail merge.
• Return to Outlook and access the Outbox; attach the files to each email; and disable Work Offline.

Utilising an Extra

Attachments can be included in your Outlook Mail Merges with the help of one of two accessible add-ins.

• Then, extract the add-on from the zip file you downloaded.
• Here’s where you should paste the MergeTools – 2022.dotm file:
• Restart Word:

Word’s interface has been updated to include a new Merge Tools tab. Read the included Read Me file if you can’t find the updated tools.

Follow the instructions to create the mail merging using Excel and Outlook.

• To merge files, open Merge Tools
• Select Merge with Attachments.
• All messages can have attachments added by selecting the field containing the path to the attachment or by clicking on Browse.
• Merge to Email Message should be selected as the destination; You should choose the recipient’s email address from the source list; a topic should be entered;

You’ll find the merged emails in the Draughts > Merge Tools folder, as is the default. For the first time, you can verify your findings with confidence. But if you want, click the Send button and have the emails sent immediately.

To proceed with the merger, select continue and then OK. You’ll be alerted to the trial version, which gives you 20 uses to try out the plugin. However, you can show appreciation to the utility developer by purchasing a licence to turn off the prompt.

Why are the Benefits of Mail Merge

Personalisation and Customisation

You may use mail merge to customise each message or document with the recipient’s name, address, and other details. It streamlines mass email communication by eliminating the need to craft numerous emails individually, saving time and effort.

Shallow Slope of Learning

Mail merges can be executed with only a few clicks, and no need to familiarise yourself with the intricacies of an elaborate email marketing platform. Email Merge or another mail merge program makes mail merging in Outlook much easier.

Faster Results

Mail merge can help businesses save time and resources by automating the process of composing and sending personalised emails to a big group of recipients.

Change Your Emails Quickly

The receivers of your emails will automatically get any revisions you make to the original email. One of mail merge’s primary benefits is eliminating the potential for error-prone human data entry.

Must Read: Outlook Inbox Not Updating Automatically

Conclusion

The mail merge in outlook makes sending out individual emails to a large group of people simple. Remember that only some mail servers support emailing a thousand people at a time. This approach works well for as many as a hundred people. Using a mailing service is preferable if more is required. It’s disheartening that we still can’t use the in-built tools to add attachments.

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