How To Mail Merge Apple Address Book with Microsoft Word

Given that there is no easy way to simply export contacts held in Apple’s Address Book application for Mac OS X, it makes it nigh on impossible to actually use the data for a mail merge in MS word. Now that’s fine if you only wish to print labels, but what about if you want to uset he data for printing labels, envelopes and even letters?

In this article I provide a quick run through on how to export the data from Apple Address Book into a format (tab separated values or TSV) that can then be read by the Microsoft Word Mail Merge process.

Exporting Contacts from Address Book in TSV

In order to export the contacts you wish to merge, you need to download nifty utility appropriately entitled Address Book Exporter. This is a freeware application and can be downloaded from the X website and can be used to generate a file that contains any or all of the contacts, or even one of your pre-defined groups.

To create the contacts list in TSV, open Address Book Exporter. In the widow that apears you are given a list of the available contact groups to export, starting with ALL and then listing your personal groups in alphabetical order. On the right you will notice 2 export options: Export using current fields, or Export using template, with a further drop down selection of: Entourage, Outlook, Palm Desktop or Yahoo. The second is handy for exporting your address book for import to these applications or services, but are not of use for the purpose of Mail Merge, so for leave this on the default option.

To alter the required fields for export, click the “Configure Settings” button top right, which will produce a drop down dialog. From this select the desired entries, and then click “Ok”. Having selected the desired export group, click “Export Address Book” top left of the main window, chosing the desired save location from the save dialog drop that appears.

Now that you have the contacts exported in TSV - tab-separated value - format you are ready to go into MS word and get mail merging.

Step 1 - Setting Up the Mail Merge in Microsoft Word

To get started in MS Word, you need to select “Mail Merge Manager” from the “Tools” drop menu. This opens up a supplementary screen (displayed right), from which you can then manage the process of importing the contacts and then creating the desired template ready for the mail merge and then printing.

To kick things off you need to click “Create New” and select the document type you require for your mail merge. This can be any of Form letters, Labels, Envelopes, or Catalog. Having selected the document type and taken the appropriate steps thereafter to select the size, and other options, you are ready to move on to selecting the data source you just exported from Addresss Book.

Step 2 - Selecting the Recipients List and Using Your Exported Contacts

Clicking the “Get List” drop menu in section 2 of the Mail merge Manager, produces a choice of options, including: NewData Source, Open Data Source, Office Address Book and Filemaker Pro. If you select “Open Data Source” an open dialog will appear, from which you can select the exported TSV file created with Address Book Exporter.

The initial import step will ask yo to select the text encoding for the file, which you can of course leave as the default option and simply click “OK”. Once this is done mail merge will change according, activating the data management icons and opening up step three, in preparation for you to drag and drop the data placeholders onto your document.

Step 3 - Inserting The Placeholders

The placeholders drop section of the Mail Merge Manager window is split into two tabs: Contacts and More. The “Contacts” tab contains all the field headers form the exported file, and which of course denote the data from the related contact record. The “More” tab provides access various mail merge tags used for repeating data, handling of empty fields, and more.

To set up your document with the palceholders, simply drag and drop the desired entries in turn onto the document itself and move them around accordingly, being sure not to edit or change them as you do.

With the content ready and the data placeholders in position you are pretty much ready to merge and then print the documents.

Step 4 - Filtering The Recipients List

If you wish to “sort” or “filter” the list of acontacts being merged, then step 4 is the place to do it. I often find it handy to actually sort the contacts by last name so that when you are looking through a set of labels for 1600 people you can easily sift through the pages and find the person easily, rather than to have to eyeball every single page.

You can use the filter options to process a large list of contact in batches, and make the entire process a little more manageable. It also means you can pick up where you might have left off in a previous merge.

To filter or sort the list, simply click “Options” and follow the instructions in the tabbed dialog window that appears.

Step 5 - Previewing The Results of Your Mail Merge

Once the placeholders are formatted within the design and confines of your mail merge document, it is worth previewing them. This can be done easily from section 5, and merely requires you to toggle the “ABC” button, which switches out the placeholders for actual data and then for you to run backwards and forwards through the data set using the left and right arrows accordingly.

This is the best way to ensure that you can print out the labels, envelopes or letters with a minimum of error and waste, not just of paper, but also of your time in trying to correct the documents that came out looking wrong.

Step 6 - Completing The Task

With the mail merge document template titivated and prepped as desired, you can then either mail merge the template and records directly to your printer, or, as I would suggest, merge them directly to a new document, which can then be printed from. The available optionsfor selecting records, includes: all, current or custom, from which you can select the start and end record identifiers as a range from which to print.

Conclusion: As Easy As Pi

With the availability of applications such as Address Book Exporter for Mac OS X, the process of actually running a mail merge, whether it be for invitations, monthly journals, information letters, or more, directly from the data contained within Apple Address Book, is made simple.

I still can’t quite understand why Apple doesn;t integrate soem form of export into CSV or TSV function in Address Book itself, but at least with the plethora of availabel export apps that are FREE, you wont need to shell out any more cash than you have already for Mac OSX itself.