Using the Mail Merge Function in Microsoft Word, Classic Outlook, and Excel

This will be a guide to the Mail Merge feature that is usable EXCLUSIVELY with the Classic Outlook desktop application. Microsoft has not implemented a feature-rich mail merge feature in New Outlook or in the Outlook Web App, so this guide will not cover any potential usage of those applications.

In order to use Mail Merge, you'll need three things - Classic Outlook, an Excel document containing the data that you want to merge, and a Word document that you want to merge the data into. 

To begin, you'll need to ensure that you have Outlook Classic installed on your device - to find this, open the Start menu and type in "Outlook" - there should be at least two options available, Outlook (classic) and Outlook (new):

(This is a screenshot taken in Windows 11, so your menu may appear slightly different, but the information should still display similarly)

Open the application and make sure that you can sign in using the email address that you'd like to have the emails originate from. Because this email client allows you to sign in from different providers, I recommend signing in using your network ID and the domain suffix "@sau.edu" i.e. "[e-mail]" rather than "[e-mail]".

Next, ensure that your data looks good in Microsoft Excel. When Word uses the mail merge feature, it can be set up so that the first row in the sheet are your fields to be filled, while the columns contain the unique data that will be merged and sent out:

For this sheet, Word would detect "name", "title", "email", and "etc.." as the fields, and in each merge, we should see that those fields are populated with the corresponding data. From my experience, capitalization and formatting does not affect how Word can pull this data. Be sure to have the email address information of the recipients present in one of the columns, as this will be required to send out the information.

After making sure you have all of your data squared away, we can move to Word. Once you've opened the document that you want to send out, navigate to the "mailing" tab. You should see the "Start Mail Merge" option in the top ribbon - if you click on this, a dropdown menu will open containing different formats that you can use. For emails, you can either use the Email option or the Letter option, as the mail is eventually sent in text either way:

Once you've set this up, click on the "Select Recipients" button, another dropdown menu will open and you can select "Use an Existing List" - this will open a window in which you can select the Excel document from which you'll be pulling your data.

After you've done this, you should then be able to start inserting merge fields using the button of the same name - Insert Merge Field:

You can move these fields as necessary to get the desired result! With the example sheet seen earlier, this mail merge would result in 3 emails being sent with the <<name>>, <<title>> and <<email>> fields being filled with each row of data.

To finalize this process, find the "finish and merge" option at the end of the ribbon. Clicking this will open yet another dropdown menu, and here you can choose how you'd like to distribute the finished documents:

"Edit Individual Documents" allows you to further customize the documents as needed, "Print Documents" will allow you to print these out if they're being sent as physical letters, and "Send Email Messages" will distribute them to a list of email addresses that you've created in the Excel spreadsheet containing your data. 

For our purposes, we'll use the "Send Email Messages" feature - clicking this will open a window where we can choose some options for how it is sent: 

The "To" field will determine which column the email addresses are being pulled from, the "Subject" line is the subject of your email (this does function with our Proofpoint encrypted email system, you'll just need to denote that it's an encrypted mail by using [encrypt] in the subject), and the "Mail Format" field allows you to change how the recipient receives your message

"Plain text" will give an accurate representation of your Word document, "HTML" allows for some extra functionality and customization, and "Attachment" sends the merged document as an attachment to the email.

I've had the best success choosing "Plain text" in the past. 

Once you've selected your options, click the OK button and it will first prompt you for permission to access your Outlook - Click on the "allow access" checkbox and select "10 Minutes":

Once completed, Word will begin to auto fill and send these documents to the relevant parties - unfortunately, there is a known issue with this feature, in which you'll be prompted to allow access before each email is to be sent out. Unfortunately, we don't have a timeline from Microsoft as to when this feature will be fixed and fully functional, but it should still be quicker than customizing individual emails!

In trying this as of 1/15/2025, it looks like I was able to complete the mail merge without having to approve each email, I'll continue to test this to see if there have been any changes without my realizing.