How I set up my Gmail Contacts
I manage my xmas card contacts by making use of the “other” field in the contact record. I put “xmas” in each one. I use the “title” field for the title that will be printed on the label.
Get the file ready in Excel
1. Click on “contacts” in Gmail
2. Click on “export”
3. Select “only Christmas cards”
4. Select “Outlook CSV format”
5. Click on “export”
6. Open with Microsoft Excel
7. Delete every column except for the first, middle, last name, and address column
8. Change the “Home Address” title to “Address”
9. Save this as an Excel 97 file in the Christmas folder and get out of Excel.
Use Mail Merge in Word
1. Open Microsoft Word
2. On the tools menu, point to Letters and Mailings, and then click Mail Merge Wizard.
3. Click Labels, click “starting document”
4. Click Label options. Use Avery 5160. Click “ok.” Click “select recipients”
5. Select “use an existing list,” then click browse
6. Choose the excel file you just saved, choose the first selection (if there’s more than one), click OK, rearrange the fields with first name, then middle, then last, then address. Click OK.
7. Click “arrange your labels.” Choose “address block.” Use “Joshua Q. Randall Jr.” and “only include the country/region if” (leave the “if” blank)
8. Click “update all labels”
9. Click “preview your labels”
10. Click “complete the merge”
11. Click “edit individual labels” and merge all records
12. Select all the labels, change the font size to “10” and change font if desired. In 2009 I found that the addresses were too far left-aligned for my Avery labels. So I centered all the addresses, which was an easy fix. I didn’t feel like figuring out what was wrong.
13. Save the file
14. Test two pages on plain paper
15. Put the label sheets in the printer and print the labels