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Mail Merge Tips from Experience

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About this lesson

Learn tips for label margins and email merges.

Lesson versions

Multiple versions of this lesson are available, choose the appropriate version for you:

2013, 2016, 2019/365.

Exercise files

Download the ‘before’ and ‘after’ Word documents from the video tutorial and try the lesson yourself.

Mail Merge Tips from Experience.docx
14.1 KB
Mail Merge Tips from Experience - Solution.docx
19.4 KB

Quick reference

Mail Merge Tips from Experience

Label margins and Email merges have pesky issues that are easily solved with just a few clicks. 

When to use

If you use labels, you need to know how and why to fix the margins.

If you use Email merges often, there is a more efficient process that will save time and frustration.

Instructions

To fix the margins on a label document,

  1. Double Click the left ruler
    (or go to Page Layout ribbon, Margins, Custom Margins)
  2. Adjust the margin from .19 to .25
  3. Click IGNORE on the error message
  4. Happily print your labels knowing the text will stay inside the label cut line.

 

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  • 00:04 I want to share a couple of tips with you that I have learned over the last 20 years
  • 00:08 of doing mail merges with Microsoft Word and
  • 00:11 basically the main thing is the labels.
  • 00:13 When you mail merge to labels you're going to have a problem with your margins and
  • 00:17 you also need to know that you're dealing with a grid layout here.
  • 00:20 So first first of all,
  • 00:21 I'm gonna show you what I mean when we're dealing with the grids.
  • 00:23 So this is the results of my mail merge labelled it's the solution
  • 00:27 file with the video set if you wanna open that up.
  • 00:31 Whenever you click on the labels of final document, a brand new tool set comes up,
  • 00:35 ribbon set.
  • 00:36 Table Tools, and I have a Design and I have a Layout.
  • 00:40 Well on the Design portion there is a button over here called Borders, and
  • 00:44 I'm going to actually View Gridlines.
  • 00:46 Now these gridlines will not print but
  • 00:49 it allows me to actually see every single label on this screen, right?
  • 00:54 Now notice right over here, is the left edge.
  • 00:56 Now the default margin per label is 0.19.
  • 01:02 And I'm here to tell you that that 0.19, this is a little,
  • 01:06 I just inserted the line here to show you where the cut line's gonna happen.
  • 01:12 0.19 is the cut line of the actual label okay.
  • 01:16 So when you send your stickers through your printer, good luck.
  • 01:23 And I hope that it's not slanted at all because then your letters
  • 01:28 are going to be cut off on the cut line.
  • 01:30 The goal is to correct that and make it a 0.25 margin.
  • 01:34 Why isn't it the default?
  • 01:36 I don't know.
  • 01:37 Cuz whoever programmed it thinks that no one makes mistakes,
  • 01:40 and labels never go through crooked, but they do.
  • 01:43 So what we're gonna do is we're gonna click on the Layout ribbon,
  • 01:46 then come right over here to our Margins.
  • 01:48 I'm gonna come down here to Custom Margins.
  • 01:51 And we're going to change, let's see if it will let me do that.
  • 01:54 There we go, we're gonna change our left margin to 0.25.
  • 01:57 Now you keep your eye right over here, okay?
  • 02:01 And I'm gonna hit OK right down here, let me hit OK.
  • 02:06 And you can see that it all shifted over a little.
  • 02:09 Even this line came with it.
  • 02:10 But anyway, I can get rid of that now.
  • 02:13 So it shifted over just enough.
  • 02:14 And now, that just gives you enough leeway so
  • 02:17 if your sheet of labels goes through a little crooked, the 0.25 will fix it.
  • 02:21 Okay, so that was the two tips I wanted to share with you,
  • 02:24 fix your Margin to a quarter of an inch and
  • 02:27 make sure that your Table Tools > Borders, so that you can view the gridlines.
  • 02:32 So that you can see what's going on inside the labels.
  • 02:35 All right, that's it.
  • 02:36 Thank you so much.
  • 02:38 Bye.

Lesson notes are only available for subscribers.

Mail Merge to Emails
04m:16s
Proofing
05m:01s
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