The holidays are just about here. It’s the time of year when your productivity dips, your scale tips, and your to do list seems as if it will never be finished.

In the spirit of helping you get things done, we’re posting one of our favorite tips: How to create labels with mail merge. Whatever you use it for – holiday cards, end-of-year reports – it’s a time-saver and a headache-reducer. Plus, it’s the number one question our customers ask.

Mail merges make even the most nimble users shudder. That’s because they fail so often. 

Happy holidays.

Creating Labels with Mail Merge from a Data Source

Mail merges make even the most nimble users shudder. That’s because they fail so often. The most common type of merge involves taking data stored in Excel and bringing it into Word. 

If you are thinking of going beyond labels and writing full-on letters, this tip will still help you; the procedure for performing a mail merge to labels is similar to that of creating letters.

Word 2003:

1. Click the Tools menu, move your mouse cursor over Letters and Mailings, and select Mail Merge. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To, Time-Saving Tips Excel, mail merge, Word

Many of our customers start their calls with apologies about the stupidity of the questions that are to follow, but it really is unnecessary. No question is a dumb question.

Sloppy sorting can wreak havoc on data. That’s why it’s good to know the basics before you begin.

In this company’s 17-year history, its consultants have solved millions of software snags, from the most basic to the maddeningly complex. Recently, we took a look back to analyze what help our clients needed most.

Not surprisingly, the top five most frequently asked questions are all related to the three most heavily used applications — Microsoft Word, Excel and Access.

Here are the top five, with instructions if applicable. Bookmark and save.

No. 5. How to use query by form in Access (2002, 2007)

Query by form will allow you to enter a value on a form using a text box, check box, combo box, etc. You can then use this value as the criteria for a query, making the query far more dynamic. Use the steps below to setup a sample query: Read more…

Jenny Sweeney How To Help Desk, import data, mail merge, productivity, query by form, sort

Every workplace has an office tech expert. Someone who knows how to use Excel formulas, can put up a good fight with a gnarly mail merge, and knows what temp files are and why they should be cleared.

They’re valuable people to have on your team. If only more of your employees were so clever with the computer, your business would hum.

Shadow support may seem harmless, but it’s actually taking two employees away from their jobs. That’s double-downtime.

Unfortunately, not everyone’s strength is software or logic — and that’s just fine. (I can’t do my own taxes; that’s why I outsource it to my mother.) However, you cannot continue relying on the office computer guy forever. As much as he saves your office’s collective rear-end on a regular basis, the time he’s spending doing something other than his job is costing you dearly.

There are two types of downtime: unavoidable and avoidable. Unavoidable downtime includes hardware malfunctions or network connectivity problems — problems that will always exist and are really just part of running an IT infrastructure.

Avoidable downtime is where the office expert comes in, and includes shadow support, self-help, and no help at all. Read more…

Jenny Sweeney ROI, Worker Productivity Cap Gemini Ernst & Young, downtime, Excel, mail merge, PowerPoint, productivity, TCO