Create email holiday cards in Word

Maybe you've decided to send your cards by email this year--whether for financial or environmental reasons. (Think trips to get stamps, to get cards, to mail cards--when you'd rather spend the time writing the cards, connecting with friends and far-away family members.)

You can create email cards in Word.

Caveat: If you have Microsoft Publisher, that's probably a better tool for this job. Or you can use an Outlook template.

But if you don't have either of those programs, or you just want to use Word because it's your favorite, you can. And it's going to involve email merge.

That doesn't sound very personalized--but it can be. Open up your data source and add a column labeled Message. Then, in that column, write the personal message that you want to send to each person. Catch up, if you haven't spoken in a while. Yes, it's a little odd to be writing long, personal letters in an Excel worksheet or another data source, but you can get into the spirit.

Next, set up your card.

I added a picture, and I set the position to top left. Then, I added a text box (that's on the Insert tab), and I set its line value to none. As with any mail merge, I added my placeholder text, and I left a space for my message.

(True confession: I tried several other approaches before I found this one that works.)

Now, click the Mailings tab, and start your email merge. Choose your data source, and edit the recipient list so that only the people you're sending cards to are selected. In your document, add a Greeting Line field (and if you've already put "Dear" in your placeholder text, be sure not to include it in your Greeting Line field).

Then click Insert Merge Field, and click Message.

If you want to add some special artistic effects to your picture, select it, and then choose the options you want on the Picture Tools Format tab.

Next, you can preview your email merge.

And now you can send out your cards and bake a batch of cookies.

For more information on mailings, see the Holiday Mailings page on Office.com.

Best wishes.

-- Joannie Stangeland