Mailing List In Excel

[studiobassist]

I have a customer that wants compile his own mailing list. Since he has
excel and my mailing software imports excel files, it seems like I
should have him put his list together in excel.

Is the best way to to this to designate column A as say business name,
column B as first name, column C as last name, column D as address and
so on and so forth. All columns would be kept consistant with their
designations and each number line would be a seperate address. Would
this be the proper way to have him set up his mailing list????

Please help!

Thanks,
Todd

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Todd,
Why are you asking us if it is your program he is going to feed.
Otherwise, hopefully there is flexibility in your program.

As far as a visual presentation goes I would put whatever is
sorted in column B, and the phone number contact in column A
as it is the phone number you would want quickest access to if
looking at a list.

If there are separate addresses, I would include all information
and not leave out company name etc when you have multiple
addresses for the same company -- makes working with
Excel and sorting a lot easier, as well as printing address labels
with mail merge. If you have multiple addresses or contacts
you might use a column to indicate primary as 1 so that you
can filter on the list as to who gets a mailing.

They can prepare their list in any order that is easy to prepare
initially and then move columns around for future use as
name and address list.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/fillhand.htm#mouse
see " Move a Column(s) and insert between columns
without losing data" below that topic.

 

[studiobassist]

I will give what you say a shot. I was having some trouble getting the
fields to imort correctly into my Mailers +4 software and thought it
may be the way I had my fields setup.. I would love to hear how other
people have setup mailing lists in Excel or maybe someone know of a
good template.

Thanks again,
Todd

 

[David McRitchie]

Hi Todd,
Misunderstood, thought you had written the email package, but I see
that "mailers +4" is commercial software that you use.

For myself I simply use Mail Merge and zip codes are text.
http://www.mvps.org/dmcritchie/excel/mailmerg.htm
I'm guessing that you have a problem with zip codes and phone
numbers both of which I would have as text, but the software you
use might see that differently, and you do not indicate what fields
you have a problem with. Mailing software might also separate
out the house number from the street, which you can easily separate
in Excel.