Word Mail Merge: One DOCX per Spreadsheet Row

About the Word Mail Merge: One DOCX per Spreadsheet Row

Write the document once in Word — an offer or appointment letter, a contract, a notice, a certificate, a rent receipt — with the column names of your list between braces where the values go: Dear {Name},. Open it here with the list (Excel, OpenDocument or CSV, or rows pasted from a spreadsheet), and every row becomes its own finished .docx, named from its columns; with a pass, they download in one ZIP. With a pass you can also make one combined .docx for printing, each document starting on a new page with its own page numbers, or print them all and save one PDF with your browser.

The template keeps all of its Word formatting: fonts, letterhead, tables, headers and footers. Values can be formatted as numbers, currencies and dates; paragraphs, table rows and words can depend on a condition; a table row can repeat for each line of a grouped list, as on an invoice. Before anything is made, every field is checked against the list and every row is checked for empty fields, and you can step through the merged documents. Word’s own merge fields (MERGEFIELD) are read too. Everything runs in your browser: the template and the list are never uploaded, and there is no limit per document.

Common uses

• HR teams making offer, appointment and experience letters for a batch of new joiners from one spreadsheet.
• Schools and training centres making admission letters, fee notices or certificates for a class.
• Landlords and property managers making rent receipts or notices for every tenant.
• Small businesses making contracts, quotations or invoices with a repeated row per line item.

Tags you can use

• {Name} — the row’s value. Names match without regard to capitals, spaces, _, - or ., so {first_name} finds “First name”; {{Name}} works too.
• {Name|Dear customer} — a fallback when the value is empty.
• {Name:upper}, :lower, :title, :sentence, :trim, :first — capitals, small letters, Title Case, a capital first letter, extra spaces removed, or only the first word.
• {Amount:number}, {Amount:number:2} — a number in the chosen style (1,234.50 · 1.234,50 · 12,34,567.89 …), with as many decimals as you ask for.
• {Fee:currency}, {Fee:currency:USD} — an amount with the chosen currency, or the one named.
• {Start date:date}, {Start date:date:dddd, D MMMM YYYY} — a date in the chosen style, or with a pattern: YYYY YY MMMM MMM MM M DD D Do dddd ddd; text in [brackets] is kept. Month and day names in the language you choose.
• {#} — the document number (inside a repeated row, the line number). {Amount:sum} — the column’s total over the document’s rows.
• \{ — a brace that is not a tag.

Tags can be formatted in Word like any text: the value takes the formatting of the tag’s first letter. Word sometimes splits what you type into several pieces (after a spelling check, for example); they are joined again.

Conditions and repeats

{#if …} … {#else} … {/if} shows one part or the other. Conditions compare a column with a value or with another column: =, !=, >, <, >=, <= and contains, joined with and, or, not and brackets — {#if Score >= 50 and Type = "Permanent"}. Numbers are compared as numbers, dates as dates, text without regard to capitals. {#if Bonus} alone means “Bonus is not empty, 0, no or false”. Templates written for docxtemplater work too: {#Bonus} … {/Bonus} and {^Bonus} … {/Bonus}.

What a section covers depends on where its tags are: inside one paragraph, the text between them; each alone in its own paragraph, the paragraphs between them (the tag lines disappear); in the cells of one table row, that row; in different rows, those rows. {#each} … {/each} repeats its part for every row of a grouped document: under Options, choose “One document per group of rows with the same …” a column such as Invoice.

Word merge fields, PDF and printing

A document set up with Word’s own mail merge (Mailings › Insert Merge Field) works as it is: each «Name» field becomes the row’s value, with its formatting switches for capitals, numbers (\# "#,##0.00"), dates (\@ "d MMMM yyyy") and text before or after. Merge Record # and Merge Sequence # become the document number. The link to Word’s data source is left out, so the merged documents open without Word asking to run a query.

Word’s other mail-merge fields are not run, and each keeps the text Word last showed in it — the same text in every document. That matters most for Address Block and Greeting Line: they would put one person’s name and address on all the letters. The template check names every such field it finds; replace an Address Block or a Greeting Line with the columns you want ({Name}, {Address}), an IF field with {#if …} … {#else} … {/if}, and remove Next Record, Skip Record If, Ask and Fill-in fields.

The .docx files are your template with the values filled in, so they look exactly as the template does in Word. For PDF, the documents are laid out by your browser and printed with its print dialog (choose Save as PDF): fonts your device does not have are replaced with similar ones and page breaks can move, so check the result, or save the .docx files as PDF from Word for an exact copy.

Limitations

• Values are text: a column cannot put a picture (a photo or a signature) or a link address into the document.
• One run takes up to 10,000 rows; a ZIP of more than 1.5 GB, one combined document of more than 1,000 documents or one print of more than 300 have to be made in parts (choose “Documents to make”).
• Only Word merge fields are filled in. An Address Block, a Greeting Line, or an IF, Next Record, Skip Record If, Ask or Fill-in field keeps the text saved in it — the same text in every document — so replace it with tags; the template check lists them.
• The PDF is made by your browser’s print dialog, so it can differ from Word in fonts and page breaks, and one print gives one PDF for all documents, not one per row.
• Tracked changes in the template are copied as they are: accept or reject them in Word before merging. Comments are left out.
• Documents are only downloaded, never sent: e-mail them with your own e-mail program.

Privacy

The template and the list are opened in this browser and never uploaded; the documents are made and packed here too. Only the choices for numbers, dates and empty lines are remembered in this browser.