The idea of mail merge is simple & powerful. Imagine you handle recruitment at a large company. You just hired 300 analysts for the big data division. The next job – generate employment offer letters for each of them. Of course, you don’t want to type these letters one at a time. You have the details of all the 300 offers (name, email, address, offer code, role, benefit package details and date of joining etc.) in a spreadsheet. You also have a template of the offer letter.
Enter mail merge. This powerful feature combines MS Word documents with (Excel) data to generate all the 300 letters in just few minutes.
You can use mail merge in many similar situations – like generating invoices, address labels, certificates etc.
Read the below tutorial to learn how to set up mail merge in Word.
Tutorial – using mail merge to generate invoices
For this tutorial, let’s pick the example of generating invoices.
Step 1 – Create a workbook with your data
Let’s say your invoice has 11 fields, as shown below.
Create a workbook with 11 columns and load data as shown below.
Step 2 – Create an invoice template in MS Word
Open a new document in MS Word and create a document structure that reflects your invoice. You may download the invoice template for inspiration.
At this stage, our invoice looks like this:
Step 3 – Activate Mail Merge
Go to Mailings ribbon in MS Word and click on “Start mail merge” button. Choose the document type that best describes what you are doing (for invoices, you can choose either letter or normal word document)
This activates mail merge mode on your document.
Step 4 – Load data
Now, we need to load the field data. Click on “Select recipients” and choose “Use an existing list”. This opens File>Open dialog. Navigate to the folder where you saved Excel workbook with invoice data and select the file.
Step 5 – Insert fields at right places
Now that we have a list of fields, load them at necessary location in the invoice template using the “Insert Merge Field” button.
Pro tip: You can use Rules option to set up If then rules based on field values. (for example, if the payment reference # is empty, you can show different text)
At this stage, our invoice looks like this:
Step 6 – Preview & complete mail merge
Using the preview results area, check if everything is ok. Once you are ready, click on “Finish & Merge” to generate individual word documents or emails or prints of the invoices.
Pro tip: If you have a PDF printer, you can use that to generate PDFs for each invoice automatically.
Download Mail Merge tutorial files
There are 2 files in this tutorial – Excel workbook with invoice data & Word document with mail merge setup.
After downloading the files:
- Place them in the same folder.
- Open the Word document.
- At this point, you should get an error. Click ok.
- This will open Data link properties dialog.
- Type the full path of the downloaded Excel workbook in the Data source field. Click ok (see image).
- This should establish the connection for you.
Do you mail merge?
Mail merge is a very powerful and time saving feature. I use it often when I need to generate a lot of documents in one go.
What about you? Do you use mail merge? Please share your experiences & tips in the comments section.
18 Responses to “Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take?”
Great post. I can't vote, though, because the answer I want to put down is "it depends". As with all visualisations, you've got to take into account your audience, your purpose, technical skills, where it will be viewed, etc.
I'm with Andy: It depends. Some I would use, some I might use, some I won't touch with a barge pole.
Naturally I have comments 🙂
The dial gauge, though familiar, is less easy to read than a linear type of chart (thermometer or bullet). It's really no better than the traffic lights, because all it can really tell you is which category the point falls in: red, yellow, or green.
By the same token, pie charts are so familiar, people don't know they can't read them. Remember how long it takes kids to learn to read an analog clock?
Bullet charts don't show trends.
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or ine component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual values with Targets (or Budgets … [...]
I voted for #6 even though I agree with the other comments that it depends.
The majority of the votes are for the #2, thermometer chart. I still have yet to understand what happens when you are above plan/goal, which was brought up in yesterday's post.
Also, I agree with Jon in that it would be better to flip the series and make the filled part the target or goal and the line or marker the actual.
I am also a fan of using text when appropriate if the data is among other metrics in a type of dashboard. Calling it out by saying actual and % achievement is a good option.
Another "it depends" vote. Are you just looking at one or are you comparing a number of targets with actuals? You didn't include a text box. The problem with sentences is that they can get lost in a page of gray text. A text box can call attention to the numbers and line them up effectively.
I'm with Jon: "Some I would use, some I might use, some I won’t touch with a barge pole" and I'm surprised that some of your readers voted for the last group.
Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
"It depends" is also my take. What I usually try to drill into my clients dashboard design is the fu ndamental difference between spot results (am I on target for this month) and long term trends.. I always try to create 3 different set of graphs to represent real perormance:
- spot results vs objectives
- cumulative results vs objectives
- long-term trend (moving average) mostly) to see where we're going
[...] Best Charts to Compare Actual Values with Targets – What is your take? (tags: excel charts) [...]
[...] Related: Charting Principles, How to compare actual values with budgets [...]
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Jon says:
With any of the charts that have a filled component and a marker or line component, it makes more sense to use the filled component (area/ column) for target, and the lines or markers for actual.
Why does this make more sense? I like 6 the way it is, although I would use a heavy dash for the plan/target marker.
I totally agree, Bob. I would normally favour a line for the target and a column for the actual, you can see quite easily then which columns break through the line, then.
[...] best charts to compare actual values with targets — den Status mal anders zeigen, z. B. als Tacho [...]
Thermometer charts: "Not appropriate when actual values exceed targets" - this is easily solved by making the "mercury" portion a different color from the border, then you can clearly see where the expected range ends and the actual values keep going.
People seem to knock gauges quite a bit in dashboarding, but trying to show comparison of realtime data between operating sites and targets for each site can easily be done with a bank of gauges that have the optimal operating points at 12 o'clock.
The human eye is great at pattern stripping, and any deviation of a gauge from the expected 12 position will quickly register with an operator and attract his attention. Using a colour background, or meter edge, will also indicate the sensitivity of a particular site.
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] Best charts to compare actual with target values […]
[…] work laptop I have a favorites folder just dedicated to Excel charts. Its got things like “Best Charts to Compare Actuals vs Targets” and “Best charts to show progress“. I love me some charts […]
I am wondering how will the plotting work, for some of the targets which may have been achieved before time. E.g. for the month of Jul the target was 226 and the actual was 219. So the chart will show a deficit in meeting the target by 7 points but what if this 7 may have been completed earlier in month of June. So ideally it not a deficit.