Mail Merge and Report Writer

In Genesis

Create a report that exports to Excel

Reports->Schedule Report

• Make a report that gives you the raw data that you want to use on your mail merge (ie: a report that gives you basic student info)
• Run the report in the 'Output Format' of 'Excel'

Reports->Viewer

• Download the Excel Report to your local machine

In Microsoft Word

**Note: There are many different versions of Word out there so the process covered here may vary.

In my example I am using Microsoft Office Standard 2010 version 14.0.7147.5001 (32-bit). 

If you require additional help with using Word please click HERE for Microsoft Word's support page.

Use the Mail Merge options to bring in the Excel file data.

• Go to the Mailings tab and click the 'Start Mail Merge' button. This will open up some drop down options

• Choose the option that gives you the kind of mail merge you want to create. For our example I will choose the 'Labels' option

• Many if not most of the label vendor formats are available on this list. For our example I will use 'Avery US Letter' vendor and pick the '5160' label format

• Click the 'Select Recipients' button. This will open up some drop down options
• As we have an Excel Report with our data already, we will select the 'Use Existing List' option

• Find and select the Excel Report we previously created

• A pop up box will show up asking you to select which table the data exists in. There should only be the one to select from in our Excel Report. Click 'OK' to continue

• Click the 'Insert Merge Field' button. This will open up some drop down options
• Select the fields or column headers from our Excel Report that we would like to bring into the Mail Merge Document

• Organize your fields so they align the way you want it to look
• At this point you're editing the one set of fields and the rest of the pages, or labels in this case, will copy the format
• Feel free to use all the various formatting options of Word on and off this screen to get the labels to look the way you want
• Use the 'Preview Results' button to aid in this process

• When you use the 'Preview Results' you can see how the data will actually show up on your Mail Merged document (in this case it is a label)

• Once you feel you have the format set and ready, click the 'Update Labels' button to push-out this format to all the labels 
  • This is only necessary when Mail Merging to labels
  • You can always make changes to your format and click this button again to apply those changes to all the labels

• At this point you can use the 'Finish and Merge' button to either save, print, or email your work
• I recommend using the 'Edit Individual Documents' button 
  • This will save your work as a separate document that is just a set of labels (or whatever else you've made with the mail merge), that you can go back to and reference or reuse
  • The original Mail Merged document will still exist as it's own now so you can feel free to reformat it into other forms of Mail Merged documents
• Once you've saved your work it's time to print

While the process is generally the same, this is just one of the many examples of how to use the Mail Merge function in Word with the data that you've extracted from Genesis.