Google Merge Facility

This new version of Gmail Mail Merge program offers support for rich-text (HTML) email templates, you may add file attachments with the outgoing messages, there’s an option to BCC emails to yourself and better overall usability. Let’s get started:

Step 1: Open this Google spreadsheet and create a copy of the same in your Google Docs account (File –> Make a Copy).

Step 2: Under the new “Mail Merge” menu, click on “Reset” to clear the canvas and alsoauthorize Google Docs to access your Gmail and Google Contacts.

Step 3: Open Google Contacts and create a new Group with all the contacts who you would like to send a personalized email. Alternatively, you may simply add the recipient’s name and email addresses manually in the Google Sheet.

Step 4: Click Mail Merge –> Import Google Contacts and type the name of the Google Contacts group that you created in Step 3. Google Docs will now automatically import all the relevant Gmail contacts into the spreadsheet.

Step 5: Fill the various fields of the email template (highlighted in white).

5a. You can compose an email template in rich text using the HTML Mail tool and then copy-paste the generated HTML code into the message body field of the Google Sheet.

5b. If you would like to add an attachment to your email messages – say a PDF file or an Office document – just upload that file to Google Docs and copy-paste the ID of the file into the Attachment ID field. You can find the ID of a Google Docs file in its URL.

Step 6: Go to the Mail Merge menu again and click “Start Mail Merge” – the status against the names of your Gmail contacts will change to “OK” for all email messages that were successfully delivered through Google Docs.

That’s it! You’ve just completed your first mail merge through Gmail and Google Docs.

Please note that Gmail has a daily sending limit and any messages that are dispatched using the Gmail Mail Merge program also count in that limit. You can send a maximum of 500 messages in a day and if you exceed that number, Google can temporarily lock your Gmail account.