Hubby suggested something that flubbers you time after time should be blogged about – 1 so you can find it again later, and 2 someone else might be having the same issues!

Since 3^rd grade I have been on the computer.  Mom figured it was a good move to get my young brain accustomed to cognitive thinking!  Yeah mom!  I still can’t spell, but hey…

Since my sister first showed me mail merge when attempting to apply for jobs in college, I’ve enjoyed the tool for Christmas card labels.

Lately every year I attempt to mail merge, I forget how it works…

Next year when I can’t remember- here are the steps.  Or for those of you wishing to know how…  here are the steps.

1. New word doc
2. New mailing label doc
3. Select correct label size
4. Mail Merge
5. Select file (exported from yahoo)
1. Gotchas – you know the hubby and wife, need to modify first name to be either mr and mrs or his and her name.
2. Couples that are together but different last names…  can’t just do a simple combine on the label – needs an and!
6. Select arrange labels – select address block – select match fields – now assign which pieces and parts you want to show on the labels
1. Don’t forget to align right
7. Preview merge
8. Complete merge
1. If you forget this step you only get 1 page of your labels

Now read through everything and make sure you didn’t overlook one of the gotchas!

Now attempt to print! I of course need to have cute little frickin Christmas trees on my labels.  We have2 printers. One for color, one for black and white. (gotta love combining geek households!) And i need to use both to get it to print just right. The color – paper goes in so you can see it, come out so you are looking at the text upside down.  The other – the paper starts and ends upside down.  I’m not sure which way and I am pretty sure that there is a worm hole that it slips into to print and flip around…  So after wasting about 6 sheets of badly formatted labels…  I gave up and did it all on the color printer!

But it is done, even the company ones I forgot to print out…  So I had to repeat this entire process probably 4 times….  I just can’t believe that something so trivial can be so hard and get my goat every single year!