How to Create a Personal Mailing List

If you need to contact the same group of people periodically--even if it isn't terribly often--it makes good sense to create a mailing list. You might use a mailing list each year for holiday cards or an annual party, each month for a book club, each week for a regular card game. One large benefit of a mailing list is that, properly updated, it frees you from having to remember everyone on the list each time you need to send out cards or other notices.

Things You'll Need

• Computer
• Spreadsheet program such as Microsoft Excel
• Address book, paper or electronic, or other collection of addresses

Instructions

1. Create a new spreadsheet and give it a descriptive name, such as "Holiday Mailing List."

2. Add headers in row 1. If you are certain you will use this mailing list only to address envelopes and not to make form letters (which might entail using first names only in some cases, for example), label the columns as follows:

   A1: Full name
   B1: Address 1
   C1: Address 2
   D1: City, State ZIP Code

   If you might need to separate any elements of the list, for example first and last names, make a column for each. A1 becomes "First name," B1 becomes "Last name," and so on. You might even add a column for "nickname." The envelope might read William Smith, but perhaps the letter begins "Dear Bill."

3. Fill in the rows underneath the column headers. If "Address 2" doesn't apply in some cases, just leave it blank. If some of your contacts' information includes company names, you might enter those as "Address 1" or add a "Company" column, filling it in or leaving it blank as appropriate.

4. Double-check each entry for typographical errors or other mistakes.

5. Save the spreadsheet. You can now use it as a reference for hand-addressing or as a source for a word processing program to create and print envelopes automatically.

Tips & Warnings

• You can use a single spreadsheet for all mailing lists by adding a column headed "List." For each addresses, add the reason the person is on the list, for example, "book club." Then when you need to contact the book club, you can sort the list by the "List" column and easily select only those people.

• If you have many addresses entered in an email address book or contact list, try exporting the address book to a spreadsheet file (.xls). It's quicker and easier to delete many rows of extraneous information than to type the addresses in fresh.

References

• Export Contacts from Outlook to Excel
• Mr. Excel