Setup Microsoft Office mail merge

This article details how you can generate barcodes using mail merge in Microsoft Office Word.

Note

Mail merge is only supported in recent desktop versions of Microsoft Word. This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge about what mail merge is, how it works and that you’re running Word 2016 or later.

More information about mail merge can be found on Microsoft’s website.

Caution

Depending on the size of your mail merge, we suggest not requesting all barcodes at once as this may cause Word to freeze and barcodes may fail to generate. Requests are also rate limited, which may also cause barcodes to be missing. Instead of selecting all the document contents, select multiple pages at once

Microsoft Word for Windows

1. Open your Word document that contains your mail merge template in the desktop Word app
2. Open the “Barcode Generator” add-in. You can find this in the “Insert” > “Barcode” menu item within Microsoft Word
3. Turn the “Enable mail merge mode” toggle on
4. In the “Mail merge field name”, enter the name of the field within your mail merge recipient list that you want to use within your barcodes
5. Configure your license key by navigating to the “Premium Options” tab
6. Now customise your barcode by setting the colours, file format, error correction level, size and more in the “Options” tab
7. When ready, place the cursor where you want to insert your barcodes and click “Insert mail merge field”
8. To verify the merge field was inserted, press the Alt + F9 keys together to enter field code mode in Word. You should see the INCLUDEPICTURE macro appear
9. Press Alt + F9 keys together to exit field code mode in Word
10. When ready, click “Finish & Merge” > “Edit Individual Documents…”
11. Press Ctrl + A to select the entire document, or click and drag your cursor to select some of the pages within your mail merge document that contain the barcodes you’d like to appear.
12. Press F9 to update the selected fields. If you see a prompt that “This document contains fields that can share data with external files and websites” click “Yes” to proceed.
13. Wait a few moments, and your barcodes should begin to appear

Microsoft Word for macOS

1. Open your Word document that contains your mail merge template in the desktop Word app
2. Open the “Barcode Generator” add-in. You can find this in the “Insert” > “Barcode” menu item menu item within Microsoft Word
3. Turn the “Enable mail merge mode” toggle on
4. In the “Mail merge field name”, enter the name of the field within your mail merge recipient list that you want to use within your barcodes
5. Configure your license key by navigating to the “Premium Options” tab
6. Now customise your barcode by setting the colours, file format, error correction level, size and more in the “Options” tab
7. When ready, place the cursor where you want to insert your barcodes and click “Insert mail merge field”
8. To verify the merge field was inserted, press the Fn + Option + F9 keys together to enter field code mode in Word. You should see the INCLUDEPICTURE macro appear
9. Press Fn + Option + F9 keys together to exit field code mode in Word
10. When ready, click “Finish & Merge” > “Edit Individual Documents…”
11. Press CMD + A to select the entire document, or click and drag your cursor to select some of the pages within your mail merge document that contain the barcodes you’d like to appear
12. Press Fn + F9 to update the selected fields. If you see a prompt that “This document contains fields that can share data with external files and websites” click “Yes” to proceed
13. Wait a few moments, and your barcodes should begin to appear