I need help entering ALL of my addresses for Christmas card address labels on my new iMac. Whats the best way to do this?

Question

Anyone have any tips how to get started with address labels?  I went to my address book, but it looks so time intensive.  Can I mail merge addresses I put into a excell spread sheet to print labels?? 

Answer 1

Don't waste your time with formatting in any of those programs - creating two pages for cards, blah blah blah.
The best way to mail merge on a mac is using address book.
People think merging got harder, but apple made it easier - more intuitive. You don't merge mailing labels through a word processor - you do it through the program which houses the addresses.  If the addresses aren't in address book yet, that's a snap.
First, go to your program/file with the addresses (pages, numbers, excel, etc.). I think it's easiest to use numbers.
make sure the column headings are set to Mac Address Book Standard Names - that way you won't have to spend too much time mapping them in address book. (if you're not sure what those are - open address book and just a view a card/record, or open pages or numbers and search in the help menu for the term "merge field names" and it will give you a list. They're pretty simple - things like "First Name" "Last Name" "Street Address" etc.
For christmas cards, I add an extra column under the heading "Note" and input "Christmas Card List" for every record.
Once your data is formatted with the correct column names, export the list to a csv file.
Open Address book in mac and import the list - make sure the columns match up with the correct fields.
It might ask if you want to overwrite or update - that's up to you.
If you know your christmas card list has the most recent address info, hit update.
Once the import is done it should take you to the front page for the address book in which you'll be given the choice to view Icloud addresses (if you sync those) and also the Last import. Any groups or smart groups you have will show up in the list too.
Click on Last import - make sure all the addresses and names you just imported are there. If not, something went wrong - go back and check your import field mapping. If all's good, keep rollin'. (it helps to scroll to the bottom of the import list to get the count of imported records)
Here, you can do one of two things - create a group or a smart group.
For a regular group - Highlight all the records on the right panel in your last import, then go to file > new group from selection. Rename your group christmas cards or something like that.
I prefer to create smart groups.
For that, goto file > new smart group. You'll come to a filter window. Click on the first drop down box and scroll to "Note." Then in the second drop down box choose "is" and in the third and final input box on the right, enter the text from the note column you created in the address list file. I used "Christmas Card List".
That will create a smart group, such that any time you enter a new address or contact in the address book with the note field that equals "christmas Card list" it will automatically be entered into this group.
Either way, you're only one step away from labels.
With that Christmas Card List selected in address book, go to print. When the print dialogue box opens, make sure to click on the button for show details toward the bottom left. That will open up your choices for style.
Under "Style" click on mailing labels.
Under "Layout" choose your label layout (i use avery 5160). It will show you a picture of the label and you can tell if it's the right one.  You'll also notice the labels are being merged correctly, with one address per label, rather than one name for the entire page - like if you try to do this through pages.
Print away.
Hope that helps.
Craig