Create envelopes

- [Instructor] If you want to create labels or envelopes for a mail merge, you can do that very easily. So in addition to creating the customized letter I can create the pre-printed envelopes. In this video I'm going to focus on envelopes. We'll talk about labels in the next, and I'm starting with a blank document which is exactly where you should start as well. Notice on the Mailings tab at the left end in the Create group there's Envelopes and Labels. Stay away from those. You would use those to create a set of pre-addressed envelopes that were all the same. A set of labels that are all the same. We're going to start creating mail merged envelopes the way we started creating mail merged everything, which is to choose Start Mail Merge and in our case we'll choose Envelopes. The Envelope Options dialog box will open. You get to choose the size envelope that you have. I'm going to use number 10 business envelopes. Here's my preview. I can change the font that's being used. There's a 10 point being used for the return address, a 12 point being used for the delivery address. I can change the offset, where these items appear. My advice is to leave those on Auto for now and only modify them if you need to. The other tab, this gets a little more complex because if you haven't done envelopes before or you haven't done them recently and don't remember how you did them last time, this is where you need to tell Word how your printer feeds envelopes. Now, you can get out your printer manual or you can grab an envelope, or a sheet of paper even and draw an envelope on it. The most common feed is right here. And first by the way make sure that the printer that is selected is the printer you intend to use. It will be the default printer, so if your envelope printer is not your default printer you'll want to temporarily make it your default printer. Or, go to File, Print, and choose whatever printer it is that you want to use. And then, through either trial and error or by remembering, or by reading your printer manual, you'll want to set your feed method, and set your appropriate tray. When you've set your envelope and printing options, click OK, and then Select Recipients. I'm going to use a list that we have used many times already in this course, which is in Chapter Four. We have a catalog request list, and I'm going to pop that open and use the Catalog Requests sheet. And now what I want to do is position in the upper left-hand corner an address block. Simply click Address Block, choose the block you want. If you're using a new or infrequently used data source, you want to match your field, and make sure that they are correct. And then simply insert the address block, here it is. And if I preview my results, that's what they look like, which is great. This is an envelope though, and the postal service would rather that this was all uppercase. Don't change the case of this. Simply go Home, hit the dialog box launcher in the Font group, and just switch this to all caps. That's all you need to do. I'm formatting all of the entries for the merge field essentially. Don't worry that the address block appears in the upper left-hand corner. That's not an issue. We don't care where it's going to print until we've actually printed it. And then if we need to make an adjustment we'll make an adjustment by returning to Envelopes, and changing the envelope options. So, I can print the current record for example and test it. If after doing that I find that I do need to make some changes, when you return and go back to Envelopes, and open up the options, and for example change your printing options here. It says in order to apply the selected envelope options, Word must delete the current contents of Document1. No, bad idea. So before you modify the envelope or printing options, first, you will want to save this particular document. If not, I will often simply generate my envelopes and pitch this document because I can so easily recreate it anytime I need it.