Is mail merge available in the online version of O365?

[cheaptonersucks]

Hi,

Does anyone know if mail merge is available in the ‘online’ version of Office 365, as a member of staff can’t find it and I can’t see it either?

 

Thanks in advance.

Edited September 7, 2021 by cheaptonersucks

[paulkerton]

Hi,

Does anyone know if mail merge is available in Office 365 as a member of staff can’t find it and I can’t see it either?

 

Thanks in advance.

Not in Word Online no.

[Michael]

Last I looked no, you need Outlook 2016/2019.

[cheaptonersucks]

Thanks for letting me know.

[TechMonkey]

Also bear in mind that Word can not mailmerge with a data source in OneDrive or Sharepoint. The Word document can be online, just not the data source.

[tapb]

It is one of the many things that can be done with PowerAutomate

[psydii]

It is one of the many things that can be done with PowerAutomate

 

Which is a massive regression- word should never have lost this ability - its pretty fundamental to most business uses. I mean by all means make it powered by powerautomate in the background. But the UX should be that it starts from, and looks and feels like the app we are in (Word).

[DrBeaker]

I've often looked for this too and gone back to the old way of doing it.

 

Really surprising that the combo of Excel, Word and Office 365 all online and cloud cannot do this in 2021

[tapb]

The majority of my role is working at the people end of technology with training and adoption and it's definitely ramped up the levels of complexity.

FYI here's the official "service description" for Word for the Web including "Mail merge" Word for the web - Service Descriptions | Microsoft Docs

Edited September 8, 2021 by tapb

[Oaktech]

Can I confirm if this is available on the downloaded version of Office 365 as my MAT are rumbling about wanting to use it on all computers instead of our seperately licensed versionof 2016-19 and this would be a total deal breaker as the staff use it practically daily to produce labels and certificates.

[Norphy]

Can I confirm if this is available on the downloaded version of Office 365 as my MAT are rumbling about wanting to use it on all computers instead of our seperately licensed versionof 2016-19 and this would be a total deal breaker as the staff use it practically daily to produce labels and certificates.

 

I have the CB of Office installed on my new work laptop and yes, Mail Merge is available in full fat Word.

Edited September 8, 2021 by Norphy

[Boredguy]

Can I confirm if this is available on the downloaded version of Office 365 as my MAT are rumbling about wanting to use it on all computers instead of our seperately licensed versionof 2016-19 and this would be a total deal breaker as the staff use it practically daily to produce labels and certificates.

 

I think they mean the online version as in the one that runs within the web browser.

 

Mail merge is in the normal full installation version of Office365 as I still use it frequently.

[Oaktech]

I think they mean the online version as in the one that runs within the web browser.

 

Mail merge is in the normal full installation version of Office365 as I still use it frequently.

 

Thanks. :thumbsup:

I wasn't sure, and I don't use the 365 versions anywhere - even at home.

[psydii]

The functionality between the non-subscription app and the per-user-per-month licenced app in this regard are the same.

 

Neither can use mail merge sources that are purely stored in SharePoint/OneDrive. The file has to be synced into the OneDrive client, which means the local path is hard coded into the word doc, which means a mail merge set up by one user cannot be used by another.

 

Hopefully Microsoft will fix this soon (perhaps with PowerAutomate and Fluid on the back/front ends). The advantage to moving to subscription, is that if you were licenced for the standalone product you wouldn't get the new functionality until you manually upgraded. Not sure this particular issue is on any public roadmap though.

[TechMonkey]

Neither can use mail merge sources that are purely stored in SharePoint/OneDrive. The file has to be synced into the OneDrive client, which means the local path is hard coded into the word doc, which means a mail merge set up by one user cannot be used by another.

 

This has been pointed out and talked about since OneDrive first appeared. I have given up all hope of it ever being sorted.

[cheaptonersucks]

I completely agree. It’s used heavily in all the schools that I have worked for.

[DrBeaker]

I've used the traditional 'client-side' mail-merge twice today, for things I needed to do.

 

No reason why I couldn't have done it online if OneDrive and MS supported it.

[cheaptonersucks]

It’s bewildering why MS would not include such a heavily used feature???

[Boredguy]

It’s bewildering why MS would not include such a heavily used feature???

Do you mean why is it not included in the web-browser only version of Word in Office 365, as it is clearly in the C2R download copy of the application.

 

The Word WebApp has limited functionality because it's running within a browser only and is designed to work across different operating system platforms.

The Click to Run download copy of Office at least is designed either for Windows or for MacOS (plus you have the full apps on the mobile devices)

 

Not sure if the Google Docs also has mail merge built in to the browser app either.

[Norphy]

Not only that, but I'm willing to bet that the feature isn't used heavily enough to justify putting it into the online version. Don't forget, Microsoft gather a lot of metrics about the usage of their software and they don't do it for the LOLs. They know how heavily a feature is used so that they know whether it's worth putting in the resources to develop it further.

[psydii]

Yeah but metrics can be misleading. Mail merges save *so* much time, but may only be occasionally run. Jumping around the hoops 365 puts in the way requires me to get involved three or four times a year, instead of it being a purely office admin task. I doubt very much if the cost of my time is a metric that MS measure.

[AlexDual]

Just in case someone stumbles over this in future - I made securemailmerge.com (on the Office store as "SecureMailMerge") which works in the web version too (and Windows and Mac). Plugin is free to use if you accept a small banner. Hope that helps!