Run a label merge.

1. Log into your organization's VolunteerMatters Administrative Site
2. Click on Admin > Labels
3. The system will list all of the available templates, their names, and descriptions to help you select the appropriate label for a merge. You are also presented with two icons to the right of each listing. 
   
    Details - allows you view the label template. This is not a preview of the eventual output but just a view on the settings applied to this template. This can also help you to determine if this label template is the appropriate selection for you. 
   
    Merge - allows you to generate new label merges against the template and also see previous merges that were saved in the system. 
4. Click "Merge" to the right of the template you would like to use in your merge. 
5. To create a new set of labels, click “Merge to Individuals” 
6. ‘Merge to individuals’ allows you to select individual contacts using the contact chooser to create a label merge against one or more specific contact records.  You may add selected contacts by using the contact chooser. To learn more about searching and selecting contacts via the chooser and List Views, please reference the articles "Working with the contact chooser." and "Manage List Views for Contact Lists".
   
   Remember to check the desired recipients in the chooser and the click OK to add them to the merge run.
   
   It’s important to note that if you “check all” or “clear all” it will only act on the records viewable in the list, not on all of the records that may have resulted from a search. For example, if your “Results per Page” were set to 25, it would act on the 25 records displayed. If “Results per Page” were set to 500, it would act on the 500 records displayed. The “Results per Page” setting is at the top-middle of the contact chooser.
   
   
   
   
   If you do not see names in the "Contacts" section you did not add any records to the run.
   
   
   
   
7. Enter in any notes you would like to associate with this run. 
8. Select an initial output format (rtf is a Microsoft Word format, and html is for previewing within the web browser). 
9. Select a Sort Order which will sort the created labels by either Postal Code or Name.
10. Click "Run Merge" this will return you to the list of merges run for this label template. You should see the merge you just created with an "In Queue" status. Click the "refresh" ( ) icon to get updates on the merge progress. It will eventually change status to "processing", then finally to "completed". 

There will be a "download" link in the column for the format you initially set as the output format (in this example 'rtf'). Click this link to download the report. If at any time you would like the same merge in html format for previewing, just click the "generate" link under the html column. The system will generate them in the selected format and change their link from "generate" to "download". We do not offer label merges in PDF format as the layouts required for label printing must be very specific and PDF generation is less accurate in this respect.