Creating a Mailing List in Excel (2 Methods)

Let’s say our company name is Marigold Sales, and the address has changed from 7 Oak Valley St., Lakeland, Florida 33801 to Marigold Sales, 71 Glendale Ave. Boca Raton, Florida 33428. We want to inform our customers about this change using a mailing list.

Method 1 – Creating a Mailing List in Excel Using Microsoft Word Mail Merge

Steps:

Open Microsoft Word,
Go to the Mailings tab.
Select Letters (from the Start Mail Merge section).

Write down the message. The Blue-colored writing will be used with the mailing list you are about to create.

Go to Select Recipients (from the Start Mail Merge section).
Choose Use an Existing List (from the options).

Select the required file (i.e., Creating a Mailing List in Excel).
Click on Open.

The Select Table window opens. Check the First row of data contains column headers toggle.
Click on OK.

Microsoft Word will load the data.
Place the cursor in front of Recipient Name and go to Insert Merge Field (in the Write & Insert Fields under the Mailings tab).

The Insert Merge Field dialog box appears.
Select Database Fields under the Insert section.
Select the respective field (i.e., First Name).
Click on Insert as shown in the image below.

Repeat the previous sequence to insert First Name, Last Name, Company Name, City, State, and Zip Code.

Place the cursor in front of the greeting line (i.e., Dear Recipient Name).
Go to the Write & Insert Fields section and select Greeting Line.

The Insert greeting Line dialog box pops up.
Select any format for Customer’s Name. You can put Comma (,) or other delimiters after the Recipient Name. The preview is displayed under the Preview section in the dialog box.
Click on OK.

You’ll get a template of the mail list for each customer in the data file. The template will be similar to the picture below.

If you want to see the preview for any customer, select the Preview Results option (from the Preview Results section).

The template transforms into a mailing letter as shown in the following picture.

Put a Space after the First Name.

Click on the direction arrows to move forward and backward among data.

You can Edit, Print, or even Email the letter by clicking on the specific options (i.e., Send Email Message).

The Merge to E-mail dialog box appears.
Select Email Address in the To command box.
Type an appropriate subject (i.e., Address Change) in the Subject Line command box.
Click OK.

You can pick a range of customer numbers to send the Email to.

Read More: How to Send Email from Excel List

Method 2 – Creating a Mailing List Using the Microsoft Outlook Import Feature

We have a dataset of customer contact information in Excel.

Go to File and Save As.
Select CSV from the offered formats.
Click Save.

Open Microsoft Outlook.
Select File.

From the File ribbon options, choose Open & Export and click on Import/Export.

The Import and Export Wizard appears.
Choose Import from another program or file option.
Hit Next.

The Import a File command box opens. Select Comma Separated Values (CSV) for Select the file type to import from.
Click Next.

Click on Browse to import the previously saved CSV file.

Choose the previously saved CSV file from the computer directory and click OK.

Check the Allow duplicate to be created option and then go Next.

Select the location (i.e., Contacts) where the imported file has to be extracted, then click on Next.

Click on Map custom fields.

Drag the values from From (Left side) to To (Right side) to assign them.
Import First Name, Company Name, and Email Address.

Click OK similar to the image below.

You can also change the file destination. Otherwise, click on Finish.

Outlook will load all the contacts. If you want to check the imported contacts, go to Contacts and all the imported contacts will appear.

You can count or cross-check the First Names with the source data.
Outlook created a mailing list from which you can easily mail each of them instantly.

Download the Excel Workbook

Sample Dataset for Creating a Mailing List.xlsx