How to Do a Mail Merge in Word
Send personalized letters or emails from one document. This mail merge guide covers the Mailings tab wizard, an Excel list, merge fields, and formatting fixes.
A mail merge turns one Word document, plus a list of names, into personalized letters, envelopes, labels, or emails. Everything lives on the Mailings tab, and the simplest route is Start Mail Merge, Step-by-Step Mail Merge Wizard, which walks through six stages in a side panel.
Set up the document and recipients
On the Mailings tab, choose Start Mail Merge and pick the document type — Letters, Email Messages, Envelopes, Labels, or Directory. Then choose Select Recipients. You can type a new list, choose from your Outlook contacts, or use an existing list, which is usually an Excel workbook. If you use Excel, put the field names in the first row, keep all the data on one worksheet, and close the file before merging so Word can read it cleanly.
| Step | Where | What you do |
|---|---|---|
| Pick the type | Start Mail Merge | Letters, email, labels, and so on |
| Load the data | Select Recipients | An Excel list or Outlook contacts |
| Add fields | Insert Merge Field | Drop in name, address, and more |
| Check it | Preview Results | Step through real records |
| Send it | Finish & Merge | Print, edit, or email |
Insert fields and preview
Write the body once, then place the personalized parts with Insert Merge Field, Address Block, and Greeting Line. If a field does not line up with your column names, use Match Fields to map them. Click Preview Results to page through actual records and catch a blank or misplaced field before you commit. Formatting the page first helps, so set margins and a header or footer before you merge so every copy looks the same.
Finish the merge and fix formatting
Choose Finish & Merge, then Edit Individual Documents to review everything, Print Documents, or Send Email Messages. Emailing requires the Outlook desktop app and sends one message per recipient. Numbers, dates, and ZIP codes sometimes lose their formatting from Excel — a price shows as 1250.5, or a leading zero drops. Fix it with a field switch: press Alt+F9 to show the codes, edit the field to something like { MERGEFIELD Amount \# "$#,##0.00" }, then press F9 to update. If you are numbering pages across a long merge, adding page numbers in Word covers that too.
Do one full pass on a handful of records with Preview Results before running the whole list, since a single wrong field repeats across every copy. Once the template is right, the same document works for the next batch — just point it at a new list.