6/23/22
9:00 am

How To Use Mail Merge With Pages On a Mac

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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Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's take a look at the new Mail Merge feature in Pages. 
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So there's a new update to Pages and you can use it to do a Mail Merge. This was a feature that we had a long time ago in a previous incarnation of Pages and now it's back. Check to make sure you have the latest version of Pages. It's version 12.1 which you can only get if you have macOS Big Sur or newer. Now the simplest way to see this in action is to use a template that uses addresses. 
So let's go down here to the Envelopes Section and I'll choose, say, Classic Envelope. You can see here you've got your return address and you have the address who you're sending the letter to. You can use this to print an envelope if your printer can take envelopes. Now, of course, you can just type what you want in here. That's what you would normally do. But now you can use Mail Merge to print a set of envelopes. To do this you would go to Document on the right and then at the bottom of Document, all the way down here in the sidebar, is Mail Merge. Click that and now you're going to see Mail Merge options here. You're going to see each field and you'll see them highlighted here. So you can see the green one matched to green. You've got the full name and address right here and you could click one and you can see it indicates which one it is. Then you also have this full name and address for the person that the envelope is addressed to. 
Now the data for the Mail Merge can come from one of two places. The first is the Contacts App and the second is a Numbers spreadsheet. So if we're going to do the Contacts App what you want to do is click Merge right here, stick with Contacts here on the left and then you could assign each one of these to a different field in Contacts. You could also choose a Group or all of your contacts. I'm going to switch to the Contacts App here and you could see I've got all these contacts and I don't want to send to everybody. But I've created a Group called Friends and I've add it to the Contacts here. You can create Groups by going to File, New Group and create it that way and then Drag and Drop to add into the group there. So I have four different contacts and I can check to make sure that they do all indeed have an address right here as the home address and then of course the name is filled out.
So if I select that group here, you can see it says 4 records, and you can map what you want to each field. So, in this case yes for the sender I do want it to use the home address and the full name and that's coming from the Contacts App from the card designated as your card. So this one selected here if it didn't have that little icon there I could make it my card by going to Card, Make This My Card. So that is where it gets the Sender information from. Then for these I can map them to any field in the Contacts App I want. But in this case it guesses right the first time. I can Preview here and it can show me for each card what it's going to use. So here's the sender name and address and I can see the first name and address and I can flip through each one and check to make sure they all look good. 
Now to perform the Mail Merge I simply click Merge here. What it is going to do is it's going to create a new document. So notice I have two documents open now. The original one, which is the template, and this new one which actually now has four pages, or four envelopes, here. Each one customized with a different address. I can still go in and change something right there. It's all editable. But if I got the addresses right and everything looks good I can now go and Print. 
There are other templates that work as well. As you can imagine you can go and use Letters right here, I'll use Classic Letter. If I go to document here down to the bottom is Mail Merge. Here I've got address. It also includes phone number, email address, and all that from my card there. Then all of these other fields here including the first name there. Even at the bottom it's got the name there at the bottom from the sender. I can click Merge here, choose Contacts, choose from which Group here, it shows four records. I can preview each one and see what it's getting. Then I can click Merge and it would merge to create a document with four pages now. Each one with a different address right here. 
You could also go down here to some new templates, Cards, and use one of these. So, for instance, let's go and select this Celebration Event one and it will load it in. Then when I look under Document, Mail Merge, it will show me all of the different mail merge fields. So you can see this is kind of a card. It's got this one side here that's got the address information on it. Then it's got email on the first page here and first name, and all of that. So it will merge all of these fields together. I click here. I can adjust which field is used for each thing. 
Now you can also use the Numbers spreadsheet for the data. Which is really handy if you want to use this professionally. If you're a teacher and want to use it with a list of students or if this is for work and you want to use it with a list of employees or peers, you can just create that list in Numbers. So here I've got a Name, Street, City, State, and Zip. I'm going to need to combine all of these so I'm going to add another column right here and call this Address. Then you can customize this really well with a formula. I'll use Equals to start the formula. I'll start with the Street Address and then ampersand to concatenate the next piece. Quote Option Return goes to the next line. Close Quote and then an ampersand and then City and then ampersand with a comma space, in the  quotes, then State and then ampersand with just a space in the quotes and then zip. This will give an address that looks like that. We can expand that a little bit. I'll Copy and I'll Paste it here. This gives you can idea of some of the work you may need to do in advance to get the spreadsheet ready. You can name this Table something like I named this one List. I've named the spreadsheet Addresses. 
Now I've got this spreadsheet right here. Let's go back into Pages and let me go back to the Classic Envelope here. Let's do Document and then Mail Merge. But this time when I click merge I'm going to switch to Spreadsheet. I'm going to choose this spreadsheet here. It will allow me to choose which Table I'm using. So if I have multiple tables here. You can see now it is still going to take my address and name from my Contact. But the other name and address, the one for each envelope, that I need to select here. So I'll select the name column and you can see how it pulls the column names from this table. So I'll select Name and I'll select Address here. Now I can preview and I could see what each one is going to look like and Merge. Now you can see I've got an envelope for each name and address in that spreadsheet. 
Now you don't have to settle for just the templates that are there. You can create your own templates to use with Mail Merge. I'm going to use a blank document here. Let's go and show the layout here. I'm going to Insert right here in this blank document a field to be used for Mail Merge. So we can do that either under Insert, Mail Merge Field and pick one of these. There's a lot you can pick from. You can also go to Document to Mail Merge and then Add Merge Field and do the same thing here. So, for instance, I can pick Full Name and add that there. Return. I can pick Address Home and add that there. Now I can use those fields to do a Mail Merge. So I can take this right here. Merge. I can pick the spreadsheet, choose that same one. Pick Name, Pick Address, Merge. Now I get a very simple document here where every page is just the name and address. I could also put those inside of text boxes or shapes. So I create a text box here. I'll erase what's in there. I'll insert a Mail Merge field. Put Full Name like that and now I can do the merge the same way but now I've got something that I can customize and move around. One bug I've noticed is that this does work in both word processing mode and Page Layout Mode but you need to start and add everything you want while in word processing mode and then you can switch to Page Layout and it will work just fine at that point. BUT after you switch to Page Layout if you add another field, I'll go ahead and add say phone right here, it doesn't ever seem to do it. You can see it's not added there no matter how many times I go back it doesn't recognize this as a new mail merge field. Probably just a bug that will be fixed at some point. So do everything in word processing mode even if when you're done you want to switch to Page Layout mode for the final template that you're going to use. 
Now you don't have to use this for just names, addresses, and information about people. You could use it for just about anything although these fields you insert are always going to refer to things that are about people. But let me show you an example of how you can, say, make flashcards. So let's go and create a simple flashcard template here. I'm going to add some text. I'm going to make this the question and let's style it a bit. I'll make it larger, bold, to the right, and center it like that. That's the question. Then you're going to fold the piece of paper over and at the bottom will be the answer. Like that. Let's go ahead and select question there and insert a Mail Merge field. Let's just call this First Name. Let's select this one and insert a Mail Merge field and call this Last Name. Now let's flip this one over. So I'm going to go to Arrange and Rotate it 180 degrees. So now you've got something you can use as a flashcard. You can just fold this piece of paper over like that. 
Now in Numbers I've created this simple spreadsheet with a simple table here with just eight different facts that can go onto a flashcard. I've named the columns like this. I've named the table. Now if I go to Document and then Merge you could see there's First Name and Last Name. We had to use those kinds of names there even though these really have nothing to do with a person's name. Then from Spreadsheet here I can change to select Flashcards.Numbers. There's only one Table. I can set the first name to be the fact and the last name to be the planet. Merge. Now you can see I end up with an eight page document here. Each one being a different flashcard taking the data from that Numbers spreadsheet. 
So you really can use this in all sorts of interesting different ways that don't necessarily apply to people or, in fact, Mail Merge. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.

Comments: 32 Responses to “How To Use Mail Merge With Pages On a Mac”

Gendron Donald

2 years ago

You neglected to mention anything about merging with Avery labels. Can that be done?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Braden: It appears not. No problem, just design what you want using regular box text or text boxes instead of tables.

Jerry Carleton

2 years ago

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?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Jerry: No, it is one record per page.

Nancy Podolsky

2 years ago

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

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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.

2 years ago

If I have 4 postcards on 1 page, is there a way to merge 4 different addresses to that 1 page?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

JH: No, Mail Merge is one record per document.

2 years ago

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!

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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

2 years ago

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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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

Doug Palm

2 years ago

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

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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.

2 years 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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

ms: See https://macmost.com/printing-labels-using-mac-pages.html

Jessica

2 years ago

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?

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

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

Michelle

2 years ago

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.

Gary Rosenzweig

2 years ago

Michelle: I don't think there is any way to easily do that in Pages. Stick with Word for something like that.

Comments Closed.

How To Use Mail Merge With Pages On a Mac

Comments: 32 Responses to “How To Use Mail Merge With Pages On a Mac”

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