Written by Allen Wyatt (last updated February 4, 2023)
This tip applies to Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365
The Mail Merge tool in Word can be very helpful in combining information from a data source (such as names or addresses) with information in a standard document (such as letters or labels). If you have many, many records in your data source, though, the mail merge might not run as quickly as you like.
For example, let's say you are merging a large amount of data (10,000 or 20,000 records) with a single-page document to create a form letter. The most common method of doing a merge is to create a new document that contains the merged information. As each record is fetched and processed, a new page is added to the merged document. If you have 20,000 records in your data source, this means you are attempting to create a 20,000 page document! Word won't theoretically choke on such a huge document, but it may slow to a crawl depending on the capabilities of your computer.
There are a few things you can do to help speed things up. First of all, make sure you are using Draft view before you do the merge and that you turn off background repagination. This should stop Word from trying to repaginate the document during the merge process. You will also want to turn off any anti-virus software you use, or at least configure it so that it won't scan Word documents for viruses.
Another obvious thing to try is to not merge to a new document, but merge directly to the printer. Since mail merging is still a memory-intensive operation, you may still notice slowdowns while merging. In this case, you should apply any or all of the following items, which can generally conserve memory use on a PC:
After trying all these things, if you still can't get a mail merge to finish quickly, you will need to either add more memory or merge fewer records. In other words, instead of doing a single mail merge of 20,000 records, do ten mail merges of 2,000 records each. If I were doing this and my source data were in an Excel workbook, I would make ten copies of the workbook and make sure that each copy contained only 2,000 records. Then, in Word, I would change the data source for each running of the merge process.
WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (10774) applies to Microsoft Word 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2021, and Word in Microsoft 365. You can find a version of this tip for the older menu interface of Word here: Speeding Up Mail Merges.
Comprehensive VBA Guide Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) is the language used for writing macros in all Office programs. This complete guide shows both professionals and novices how to master VBA in order to customize the entire Office suite for their needs. Check out Mastering VBA for Office 2010 today!
When you merge data from Excel into a Word document, you may need to do some conditional processing based on the data you ...
Discover MoreIf you are filtering a mail merge in Excel, and you get blank labels in the printout in Word, chances are good that ...
Discover MoreWhen you merge information into a document, Word provides two different ways you can create your output. Here's an ...
Discover MoreFREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
There are currently no comments for this tip. (Be the first to leave your comment—just use the simple form above!)
Got a version of Word that uses the ribbon interface (Word 2007 or later)? This site is for you! If you use an earlier version of Word, visit our WordTips site focusing on the menu interface.
Visit the WordTips channel on YouTube
FREE SERVICE: Get tips like this every week in WordTips, a free productivity newsletter. Enter your address and click "Subscribe."
Copyright © 2025 Sharon Parq Associates, Inc.
Comments