Use Excel contact list to send serial mails

This document shows you how to set up a contact list in Excel and use it to send for Outlook serial mails. ## Set up contact list in Excel

If you have already created an Excel table with contacts or are in the process of creating one, you can go directly to the next section. There you will learn the correct settings for your table. However, if you use a CSV or TXT file for your contacts, this data must first be prepared as follows:

• In Excel, open the “Data” tab.

• Select the > option “From text” in the “Fetch external data” category.

- Select the desired file then click on > “Import”.

• Make sure that under “Original data type” the field > “Delimited” is selected before you click “Next”.

- Now select the appropriate separator. In the data preview > the different columns should be separated by dashes, > if you have selected the appropriate separator. The > most used separators are either semicolon or > comma.

• Click “Finish” and save the file under > a new name before proceeding to the next step.

Preparation of contact data

For proper use in a serial mail, there must be at least one column with first or last name, as well as one column with the corresponding e-mail address. All other individual information within the serial mail should also be listed in columns.

You now have an Excel table with contact data, but the individual columns must also be formatted accordingly.

• Select a complete column.

• Set the appropriate > formatting in the “Start” tab.

• Repeat this for each column and then save the table >.

**Note: Columns with numbers can have the formatting “Currency”. For plain text or names, use the formatting “Standard” or “Text”. But be careful, for postal codes you have to declare the column as “Text”, because in the format “Number”, leading zeros are omitted. Also for percentages, the column should be declared as “Text”, because otherwise the cell value in the format “Percent” will be multiplied by 100.\

Connect serial mail with contact list

• Open Word. The actual serial mail > is created in this program.

• In the “Sendings” tab, click “Serial printing > start” and select “Email messages”.

- Now click on “Select recipient” under “Shipments”.

• Now select “Use existing list” from the drop-down menu > and browse to the Excel file already created with your > formatted contacts.

• Now go to “Edit recipient list” and check whether > all columns have been correctly transferred to your contacts. If not, add > or change them accordingly, because the > information might be important in the further process.

Design text of the serial mail

Enter the desired text of the serial mail and set placeholders for personalized data or speeches. These placeholders can be set as follows.

• Individual approach

  • In the “Sends” tab, click > “Greeting line”.

  • Use the drop-down menus to set your desired format. You can follow this in the preview. To > distinguish between man and woman, your > contacts must have “Mr.” or “Mrs.” in the “Title” column. > must be in your > contacts.

• Personalized information in the text

  • Place your cursor in the text where you want to insert > personalized information.

  • Then click > “Insert mail merge field” in the “Sendings” tab.

  • In the drop-down menu you will now find the various > selection options. These should match your data from the > contact list. By clicking on the correct > field, the placeholder will be generated automatically.

Send serial mail

If you are satisfied with the text of your e-mail, you can check again via “Sendings” and “Preview Results” whether your placeholders and the contact list are really configured correctly.\ To send the serial mail now from Word in Outlook or another MAPI-compatible e-mail program, you still have to do the following.

• In the “Shipments” tab, go to “Finish > and merge”.

• Select “Send email messages”.

• Now define your subject line in the opened window.

• If desired, you can still limit your data set here > or make further settings.

• Click “OK”

Your serial mail will now be sent.