In Excel: Excel holds the addresses; Word prints the labels. In Word choose Mailings ▸ Start Mail Merge ▸ Labels, pick the label product, then Select Recipients ▸ Use an Existing List and point at the workbook.
On this page7
In Excel: one row per recipient, plain headers in row 1, no blank rows or merged cells, and store ZIP/postcodes as text.
Save and close the workbook — Word cannot read it reliably while it is open.
In Word: Mailings ▸ Start Mail Merge ▸ Labels, and choose the exact product code from the label packet.
Mailings ▸ Select Recipients ▸ Use an Existing List, choose the workbook and then the sheet.
In the first label, insert the fields (Address Block, or one Insert Merge Field at a time) and format them there.
Click Update Labels — this is the step that fills the rest of the sheet.
Preview Results, then Finish & Merge ▸ Edit Individual Documents, and check before sending it to the printer.
What this does
There is no label printing in Excel, and this is the single most common misunderstanding behind the question. The division of labour is fixed: the spreadsheet is the data source — one row per recipient, one column per field, headers in row 1 — and Word's mail merge lays those fields onto a label sheet whose dimensions it already knows for every Avery and equivalent product code. The step people miss is "Update Labels", the button that copies the field layout from the first label to all the others; without it you get one address and a page of blanks. The other recurring problem is formatting: mail merge passes the UNDERLYING value, so a ZIP code stored as the number 02134 merges as 2134. The fix is to store such fields as text in Excel, not to reformat them in Word. Most people learn this as a sequence of clicks and forget it by next week; learning it as a pattern instead is what lets you apply it to the next, slightly different version of the problem without starting from scratch. That is the difference this page is trying to make. The difference between a quick fix and a sheet you can trust is the extra minute you spend validating “make mailing labels from excel”. Start on a copy or a tiny sample, keep the affected cells visible, and compare the result with the tool above before you touch the real workbook. When this is a ribbon command, the selection matters more than the button: confirm the range, apply the command, then spot-check the output before saving. The point is a layout choice that keeps the sheet readable and sortable, but the practical win is that someone else can open the file and understand what happened without asking you.
A worked example
Sheet1 has First, Last, Street, City, State, ZIP in A1:F1 with 220 rows beneath. In Word: Mailings ▸ Start Mail Merge ▸ Labels ▸ Avery US Letter 5160 ▸ OK. Select Recipients ▸ Use an Existing List ▸ the .xlsx ▸ Sheet1$. In the first label, Address Block or individual Insert Merge Field entries. Then Update Labels, Preview Results to check label one and label two differ, and Finish & Merge ▸ Edit Individual Documents to get a document you can inspect before printing. The whole job is data hygiene plus one button most people never find, and knowing that in advance turns an afternoon of misaligned test prints into ten minutes. If this is something you do often, add the command to the Quick Access Toolbar (right-click it on the ribbon and choose Add to Quick Access Toolbar) or learn its shortcut, so next time it is one click instead of a hunt through the menus.
In Google Sheets
This is a command rather than a formula, so there is no syntax to carry over. Google Sheets arranges its commands in menus across the top instead of a ribbon, names some of them differently and does not have every Excel command — look for the equivalent in the Sheets menus or its help before assuming the steps match. Nothing on this page is behind a login or a download: the exact answer is at the top, and the detail below it is there for when you need it. That is the whole promise here — the answer first, and just enough context to make it stick. Treat “make mailing labels from excel” as a routine rather than a one-off. Once you know which setting or command controls it, the same few steps handle every workbook where it comes up in Excel, and you can explain them to a colleague in a sentence.
Common mistakes
- Looking for a label feature in Excel; the merge lives in Word, with Excel as the data source.
- Skipping Update Labels and printing one address followed by blank labels.
- Merging ZIP codes stored as numbers, which drops the leading zero — store them as text in Excel.
- Leaving blank rows or merged cells in the source, which truncates or misaligns the recipient list.
- Formatting fields after Update Labels instead of before, so the formatting reaches only the first label.
- Printing all 12 sheets before test-printing one on plain paper and holding it against the label sheet.
Frequently asked questions
How do I make mailing labels from an Excel spreadsheet?
Use Word: Mailings ▸ Start Mail Merge ▸ Labels, pick the product code, then Select Recipients ▸ Use an Existing List and choose the workbook.
Can I print labels directly from Excel?
No. Excel has no label layout; it supplies the addresses and Word's mail merge prints them.
Why does only the first label have an address?
You have not clicked Update Labels, which copies the field layout from the first label to every other label on the sheet.
Why did the leading zero disappear from my ZIP codes?
The merge passes the underlying number. Store the ZIP column as text in Excel before merging — a number format alone does not survive the merge.
How should the spreadsheet be set up?
One row per recipient, one column per field, headers in row 1, no blank rows, no merged cells, and the file closed while Word reads it.
Other ways people ask this
This is also commonly searched as “create mailing labels from excel”, “how do you make mailing labels from excel”, “make mailing labels from excel” and “how do i create mailing labels from excel”. They describe the identical operation, so you are in the right place no matter how you phrased it.
Why do people search for this in so many different ways?
Because the same task has many names. “create mailing labels from excel”, “how do you make mailing labels from excel”, “make mailing labels from excel” all point at the one operation explained on this page, which is why they all lead here.