Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Christmas cards must go, oh what fun it is to address each and every one, OH. Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, there’s got to be a way, to address all those cards and mail them on their way.
It’s that time again. Time to find the Christmas cards, sign them, stuff them in the envelopes and put the address and stamp on each and every one. What’s that? You’re sending electronic email Christmas cards this year? Emily Post says, “…Your great aunt Sara, who cherishes your handwritten notes, may still prefer a traditional card. Others, too, might rather have a traditional paper greeting.” Personally, I prefer a traditional Christmas card. Something I can set on the buffet table, pick up and know that this person considered me important enough choose or make a card, write a short note or simply sign, place in an envelope and spend fourty five cents to send a three dimensional greeting. There is something elegant and sophisticated about traditional social graces. An email card makes me one of untold many in your email address book, superficial and one dimensional.
However, personal graciousness and stylish behavior doesn’t have to be tedious and overwhelming. We can turn to our trusty computer companion to help us complete this task of a time honored ritual. One of the ways we can shorten our time devoted to our family and friends is to use software to prepare mailing labels or for more sophisticated users we can use a mail merge. (Martha, we could leave your sister off the list.) Let’s take a look at some tools that might help us complete our tasks and once done, give us a leg up on next year.
First, we can look at address labels. Many stores carry precut labels in standard sizes for envelopes that come on 8 ½ by 11 inch sheets for your printer. They will have a number that will tell your computer what type of size and format is needed to use these labels. For example the most common address label seems to be Avery 5160. Many other brands will tell you on the packaging that they are equivalent to Avery such and such. Decide which size is needed and purchase them.
Many PCs are shipped with MS Works installed as a basic office suite containing a word processor, database, spreadsheet etc. If you have this on your PC, the MS Works Task Launcher has a very simple wizard that will walk you through creating a page of labels that fit the labels you purchased. Here again, there are two choices. We can simply tell the wizard to create a page of blank labels and then we can type in the names and addresses in each label. When completed, save it to the computer and then next year we can simply pull up this file, make whatever changes are needed and print another set of labels.
We can also use the wizard to make the labels but instead of typing in all the names and addresses, we can tell it to pull the names and addresses from our address book or a database file of names and addresses. This is called a mail merge. Once this is done we can save this as well and next year simply pull up the file and print the labels again. This does require that we keep our address book up to date. Other programs such as WordPerfect have a similar function and can also be used to create labels.
If you have MS Word on your computer then you can also go to http://office.microsoft.com/ and click on Templates and then search for Christmas Labels. There is an entire collection of labels there that fit most of the common size Avery labels. Simply download the template and create some festive labels.
What’s that? You don’t have any of these programs on the PC? Go to www.avery.com, click on the software tab and download Avery Design and Print Online. (FREE) This program can create many different labels, supplying a template for different pictures, borders etc for your label. It’s web based so almost any PC can use it.
Finally, for those of us that torment our friends and relatives with a nefarious Christmas letter, using the mail merge feature will allow us to write a Christmas letter, but merge the letter with an address book. This allows the author to write one letter, but each time it prints it pulls a different name from the address book. I did this one year and while each letter was the same, it would start out with Dear “first name” and then as the letter progressed; each family would find that I mentioned them by name while referring to some interesting tidbit. It appeared to each reader that I had typed a letter exclusively to the recipient.
Keep those cards and letters going, there’s only thirty days till Christmas.
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