A new feature in Pages 12.1 is the ability to create envelopes, letters, invitations and other things by merging address data from the Contacts app or a Numbers spreadsheet.
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Gendron: You can already do that in the Contacts app in the Print function. The idea of Mail Merge here is to create a new page per entry. If you want something different you can use the templates that Avery provides, or there are tons of apps in the App Store for printing labels in various ways.
Gendron Donald
2 years ago
Thank you for your quick reply and I prefer Donald, please.
tom
2 years ago
Thank you for your “cut to the chase” explanation video of the new mail merge feature in Pages, extremely useful.
Ken
2 years ago
Great video Gary, very clear. Shame it has taken so long to get this feature back - and still no mail merge to email. I wonder how many of us still send letters rather than electronic communications?
Ken: "Mail merge to email" would be simply mass email. You can certainly do that as you can see by my and other newsletters, corporate communications, as well as the dark side of that (junk mail). But that requires servers, not personal computers.
Ken
2 years ago
I think you miss my point Gary, why produce templates for letters and print cards when they might design some attractive notecards we could merge to email. I am talking about small, personal runs, not mass mail. Also great for merging class information for teachers (to be emailed). MS Office and Google have had this function for a long time now.
Ken: So where would you limit it? 100? 50? 500? At any point some would complain, while others would abuse it. All the while email providers would be deactivating "free" email accounts when they send these out (their daily send limits are smaller than you think as part of their anti-junk efforts). Plus, if you ask me, "attractive notecards" with graphics aren't a good idea as email messages. You'd have to account for the myriad of ways people receive email (Mac Mail, Windows Outlook, iPhone, Android, web-based email, etc) and how the graphics would look on each. Plus how each would deal with the bandwidth required to receive these. That's very different when comparing at home on fast cable with an iMac vs 3G in rural areas on a phone and a data plan. The example of teachers sending class info is a good one, but schools should already have systems in place to handle that.
Braden
2 years ago
Is there any way to get a mail merge field to be put in a table? I was so excited to customize an emergency sheet I'm making for a camp I lead. I customized the whole document before I realized that it won't let me put mail merge into cells of a table. I'm so bummed. It looks beautiful and mail merge is exactly what I need to make this work. 1 page for every child. I can export a CSV from the online registration they filled out. I even went to an old video of yours to clean up the phone numbers.
Thanks for your very informative and straight to the point explanations in your YourTube videos. I understand how to create a pages mail merge document inserting merge fields from a numbers file. How do I insert "next record" as I want to create a directory of names, addresses, etc for a numbers spreadsheet? Am I missing an area with additional fields/statements to insert (I've used Microsoft mail merge in the past and now want to use Pages exclusively) TY
Nancy: Sorry, I don't know what you mean by: "How do I insert next record." Do you mean just typing the data into Numbers?
Nancy Podolsky
2 years ago
How to get "next record" (name etc from numbers data) on the next line of same page instead of one name on a page? I have the appropriate merge fields associated with the numbers columns (last, first, address, city, etc) placed in a Pages document for a membership directory. The next name is merged to the next page instead of the next line on the same page. Hope this clarifies questions in the previous post.
Nancy: Mail Merge works to put one record on one page. The "merge" is between those things: one record, one page. If you want something like a membership directory and you have that already in Numbers, then why move the data to Pages at all? If you need to include it with other content, copy and paste or print to PDF from Numbers and from Pages and combine the PDFs in Preview.
JH
2 years ago
If I have 4 postcards on 1 page, is there a way to merge 4 different addresses to that 1 page?
I sure hope they add that eventually. Publisher allowed you to merge multiple records to one page, but at my work we no longer use microsoft. Thanks for answering so quickly, and love that your videos are so helpful and straight to the point!
I have not seen that video, but it is very helpful and I will be trying that out today! THANK YOU!
Doug Palm
2 years ago
I want to use Pages Mail Merge feature to produce pages of plant labels, 10 labels per page. While the merge feature is printing the label text, it is doing so with one label per page but I need it to make 10 labels per page. How do I insert a “next record” command after the last field in the label so I can get this result? Microsoft Word has a “next record” command but I’m not finding it in Apple Pages.
Thanks for explaining there is no "next record" command in Pages. Good to know the way Pages does merges it is only possible to have one record displayed per section break. I want to avoid the brute force approach of having to manually rework the labels every time so I've gone back to using Word for this task since it supports "next record" functionality within a page.
Aaron Hinze
2 years ago
Gary, I know you keep repeating the one record per page/document as if that is the sole point of it. However, that isn't true. Mail merge is used to populate Avery Business card templates for multiple people's names on one page. It is used to create labels for music libraries, name tags, and many more things that require a "next record" rule to advance to the next data point on the same page. Word and Excel allow you to use several different type of rules that are pretty standard.Hope this helps
Aaron: One record per page isn't the point of it, it is how it works. Populating card templates is a useful thing, and I show how to do that in another video. But one record per page is simply how Apple designed Mail Merge. I'm just trying to get people to understand how Mail Merge in Pages works.
ms
1 year ago
Agree with previous comments - it's a shame that Apple designed Mail Merge without basic functionality. I'm trying to create Avery labels in pages with multiple records on a single page. The solution of print to labels from contacts doesn't solve my problem, as you cannot edit before printing. If I am trying to create labels for holiday cards and I have four different contacts for a single family, I don't want four different labels printed, I want to do a mail merge where I edit a few contacts.
Nice video! I have already merged data for envelopes but after printing a test run I realized I want to edit some font sizes. Is there a way to do this without making an entirely new document?
Thank you for the videos. Agreeing with the commenters that the Next Record feature of Microsoft Word and Publisher is a nice feature that saves a lot of time and effort. Is there a way to keep specific formatting including images if using the labels option? I merge thousands of records at a time and have been able to customize cards to include images using Next Record very easily. Pages does not seem to allow for this even using the labels hack.
Want to know more about how to use Pages on your Mac?
You neglected to mention anything about merging with Avery labels. Can that be done?
Gendron: You can already do that in the Contacts app in the Print function. The idea of Mail Merge here is to create a new page per entry. If you want something different you can use the templates that Avery provides, or there are tons of apps in the App Store for printing labels in various ways.
Thank you for your quick reply and I prefer Donald, please.
Thank you for your “cut to the chase” explanation video of the new mail merge feature in Pages, extremely useful.
Great video Gary, very clear. Shame it has taken so long to get this feature back - and still no mail merge to email. I wonder how many of us still send letters rather than electronic communications?
Ken: "Mail merge to email" would be simply mass email. You can certainly do that as you can see by my and other newsletters, corporate communications, as well as the dark side of that (junk mail). But that requires servers, not personal computers.
I think you miss my point Gary, why produce templates for letters and print cards when they might design some attractive notecards we could merge to email. I am talking about small, personal runs, not mass mail. Also great for merging class information for teachers (to be emailed). MS Office and Google have had this function for a long time now.
Ken: So where would you limit it? 100? 50? 500? At any point some would complain, while others would abuse it. All the while email providers would be deactivating "free" email accounts when they send these out (their daily send limits are smaller than you think as part of their anti-junk efforts). Plus, if you ask me, "attractive notecards" with graphics aren't a good idea as email messages. You'd have to account for the myriad of ways people receive email (Mac Mail, Windows Outlook, iPhone, Android, web-based email, etc) and how the graphics would look on each. Plus how each would deal with the bandwidth required to receive these. That's very different when comparing at home on fast cable with an iMac vs 3G in rural areas on a phone and a data plan. The example of teachers sending class info is a good one, but schools should already have systems in place to handle that.
Is there any way to get a mail merge field to be put in a table? I was so excited to customize an emergency sheet I'm making for a camp I lead. I customized the whole document before I realized that it won't let me put mail merge into cells of a table. I'm so bummed. It looks beautiful and mail merge is exactly what I need to make this work. 1 page for every child. I can export a CSV from the online registration they filled out. I even went to an old video of yours to clean up the phone numbers.
Braden: It appears not. No problem, just design what you want using regular box text or text boxes instead of tables.
MM at last. Hooray. Is there a way to merge multiple sets of data to a single page, like a page of three bank checks on a single page?
Jerry: No, it is one record per page.
Thanks for your very informative and straight to the point explanations in your YourTube videos. I understand how to create a pages mail merge document inserting merge fields from a numbers file. How do I insert "next record" as I want to create a directory of names, addresses, etc for a numbers spreadsheet? Am I missing an area with additional fields/statements to insert (I've used Microsoft mail merge in the past and now want to use Pages exclusively) TY
Nancy: Sorry, I don't know what you mean by: "How do I insert next record." Do you mean just typing the data into Numbers?
How to get "next record" (name etc from numbers data) on the next line of same page instead of one name on a page? I have the appropriate merge fields associated with the numbers columns (last, first, address, city, etc) placed in a Pages document for a membership directory. The next name is merged to the next page instead of the next line on the same page. Hope this clarifies questions in the previous post.
Nancy: Mail Merge works to put one record on one page. The "merge" is between those things: one record, one page. If you want something like a membership directory and you have that already in Numbers, then why move the data to Pages at all? If you need to include it with other content, copy and paste or print to PDF from Numbers and from Pages and combine the PDFs in Preview.
If I have 4 postcards on 1 page, is there a way to merge 4 different addresses to that 1 page?
JH: No, Mail Merge is one record per document.
I sure hope they add that eventually. Publisher allowed you to merge multiple records to one page, but at my work we no longer use microsoft. Thanks for answering so quickly, and love that your videos are so helpful and straight to the point!
JH: Did you see my video on how to print labels? You could use that technique instead. https://macmost.com/printing-labels-using-mac-pages.html
I have not seen that video, but it is very helpful and I will be trying that out today! THANK YOU!
I want to use Pages Mail Merge feature to produce pages of plant labels, 10 labels per page. While the merge feature is printing the label text, it is doing so with one label per page but I need it to make 10 labels per page. How do I insert a “next record” command after the last field in the label so I can get this result? Microsoft Word has a “next record” command but I’m not finding it in Apple Pages.
Doug: You wouldn't use Mail Merge for this, because it is one record = one document. Use this instead: https://macmost.com/printing-labels-using-mac-pages.html
Thanks for explaining there is no "next record" command in Pages. Good to know the way Pages does merges it is only possible to have one record displayed per section break. I want to avoid the brute force approach of having to manually rework the labels every time so I've gone back to using Word for this task since it supports "next record" functionality within a page.
Gary, I know you keep repeating the one record per page/document as if that is the sole point of it. However, that isn't true. Mail merge is used to populate Avery Business card templates for multiple people's names on one page. It is used to create labels for music libraries, name tags, and many more things that require a "next record" rule to advance to the next data point on the same page. Word and Excel allow you to use several different type of rules that are pretty standard.Hope this helps
Aaron: One record per page isn't the point of it, it is how it works. Populating card templates is a useful thing, and I show how to do that in another video. But one record per page is simply how Apple designed Mail Merge. I'm just trying to get people to understand how Mail Merge in Pages works.
Agree with previous comments - it's a shame that Apple designed Mail Merge without basic functionality. I'm trying to create Avery labels in pages with multiple records on a single page. The solution of print to labels from contacts doesn't solve my problem, as you cannot edit before printing. If I am trying to create labels for holiday cards and I have four different contacts for a single family, I don't want four different labels printed, I want to do a mail merge where I edit a few contacts.
ms: See https://macmost.com/printing-labels-using-mac-pages.html
Nice video! I have already merged data for envelopes but after printing a test run I realized I want to edit some font sizes. Is there a way to do this without making an entirely new document?
Jessica: depending on how you have it set up, you can just update the Styles. https://macmost.com/how-to-use-styles-in-pages.html
Thank you for the videos. Agreeing with the commenters that the Next Record feature of Microsoft Word and Publisher is a nice feature that saves a lot of time and effort. Is there a way to keep specific formatting including images if using the labels option? I merge thousands of records at a time and have been able to customize cards to include images using Next Record very easily. Pages does not seem to allow for this even using the labels hack.
Michelle: I don't think there is any way to easily do that in Pages. Stick with Word for something like that.