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Excel Mail Merge: How to Send Bulk Emails in Gmail (The Best Way)

If you have your contacts and their email addresses saved in an Excel spreadsheet, it’s easy to run an Excel mail merge to send each of them individual messages with Gmail.
The following quick example will show you the best way to do a Gmail mail merge with your list of email addresses in Excel.

How to Send Personalized Mass Emails with Excel in Gmail (Step-by-Step Process)

  1. First, we start with our Excel spreadsheet, in this case one with a few customers of Ted, our fictional shopkeeper, who wants to use his list to send personalized emails.

    An Excel spreadsheet is shown, with three customer rows, including email addresses.
    An Excel spreadsheet on your computer, with three customer names and their email addresses.
  2. Now we want to import this list of email addresses into Google Sheets. To do that, make sure you are logged into your Google account, and then go to Google Sheets. (In our example, it will start with no sheets; in your case, you may have previous spreadsheets already there.)

    Shows Google Sheets with no sheets shown.
    Google Sheets, with no sheets in it yet.
  3. Click on the folder icon on the right to open the File Picker.

    Shows cursor hovering over the File Picker icon in Google Sheets.
    Click this folder icon to open the File Picker.
  4. This will bring up the Google Sheets File Picker, allowing you to pick your Excel file to upload. Click on Upload.

    Showing cursor hovering over Upload in the Google Sheets File Picker dialogue.
    Click on Upload to select your Excel file.
  5. The screen will change, asking you to either drag or select a file from your computer. In our example, we’ll select one. Click on the blue “Select a file from your computer” button.

    Showing cursor hovering on button to select a file from within the File Picker dialogue of Google Sheets.
    About to select our Excel spreadsheet after clicking here.
  6. From here, pick your Excel spreadsheet from the file manager on your computer. 

    Showing desktop File Manager, about to select an Excel file to upload to Google Sheets.
    Selecting the Excel file from your desktop’s File Manager via Google Sheets.
  7. This will then be uploaded to Google Sheets and converted into a new Google Sheet spreadsheet. However, before we can use it in GMass (which is the top tool for for mail merges in Gmail), we have to edit it, very slightly and quickly. That’s because this spreadsheet has text above the columns that hold the FirstName, LastName, and Email fields, and that will introduce an error. So, you will need to just make sure there is nothing above these columns. Let’s do that by selecting the two rows above and just deleting them. Do that by holding down shift, clicking on the row number, 1 and then row 2, which will select both these rows:

    Two rows in Google Sheets sheet are selected.
    Two rows that we want to delete are selected.
  8. Select Edit from the menu, and drop down to select “Delete rows 1 – 2”. 
    Shows Edit menu dropdown with "Delete rows 1 - 2 " selected. This is from within the Google Sheets sheet.
    About to delete rows 1 and 2.

    Our quickly cleaned-up sheet should now looks like this and your list of email addresses is ready to use with GMass for your Gmail mail merge:

    Showing Google Sheets sheet, now ready to use with GMass.
    Sheet is now ready to use with GMass.
  9. Now go to Gmail and click on GMass’s spreadsheet button near the top to connect to an email list in a Google Docs spreadsheet.

    Shows cursor hovering over the spreadsheet button in GMass.
    Click the spreadsheet button to connect to your Google sheet.
  10. This will bring up a window allowing you to select the Google Sheets spreadsheet you want to use to populate the email addresses in your mail merge.
    Shows the GMass spreadsheet connection window.
    The GMass spreadsheet connection window.

    From this window, select a spreadsheet from the dropdown.

    Selecting our Google Sheets sheet from the dropdown.
    Selecting the spreadsheet we just uploaded into Google Sheets from Excel.

    [Note: in this simplified example, there is only one spreadsheet listed. For regular users of Google Sheets, there may be many sheets to select from. Make sure you choose the correct one.]

  11. Then, once you have selected a spreadsheet, the “CONNECT TO SPREADSHEET” button will turn red. Click on the “CONNECT TO SPREADSHEET” button.
    [Note: For this tutorial, we are not going to address the Optional Settings.]

    Cursor hovering over the Connect to Spreadsheet button in GMass.
    Click the red bar button to connect GMass to the Google Sheets spreadsheet.

    The screen will change at this point. The GMass Google Sheets chooser window will be gone, and now you’ll see a Gmail Compose Window is open. In the To field, the email addresses of the contacts from your Google Sheet have now been populated.

    A new Gmail compose window, with email addresses from our spreadsheet.
    A new Gmail compose window, with email addresses from our spreadsheet.
  12. From here, you can send out your personalized emails as you normally would in GMass. For example, you can send out a sales email with the GMass personalized greeting feature, as shown below.
    The Gmail compose window, showing an email written and ready to be sent out.
    Ready to send out individualized emails with GMass.

    Tip: Because you’ve used a spreadsheet that indicated the first name and last name of each email recipient, GMass will intelligently personalize the greeting for all of them. For example, the second recipient, Brandon Walsh, will have an email that starts, “Dear Brandon.” Without using a spreadsheet to indicate first and last names to GMass, only Gmail addresses would automatically use the first and last names of the recipient. That’s a nice advantage of using spreadsheets: everyone can receive a personalized email!

  13. Now, just click on the red GMass button to send out the individual emails, and your Gmail mail merge is done!
  14. You’ll get a message telling you “You did it!” Now let’s check that they went out as planned. Go to your Sent folder in Gmail.
    Showing the Gmail Sent folder, with the three emails having been sent out.
    Our three emails from the spreadsheet have gone out!

    It worked!
    Of course, the real power comes when you have a large number of names and email addresses in your Excel file. Within a few minutes, you can be sending all of these Google contacts personalized mass emails with GMass.

If you aren’t using GMass yet — Excel mail merges isn’t all it can do. In fact, GMass is one of the most popular cold email and newsletter tools in the world. You can use it for automated follow-ups, A/B testing, email analytics, and pretty much any other email campaign needs you might have.

To get started with GMass, download the Chrome extension. You’ll start a free trial (no credit card required) where you can send up to 50 emails per day as you test it out.

Ready to send better emails and save a ton of time?


GMass is the only tool for marketing emails, cold emails, and mail merge — all inside Gmail. Tons of power but easy to learn and use.


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42 Comments
  1. This is great! I now use Excel, Word, and Outlook for sending mass mail. One benefit is that I can use the following to personalize the person(s) receiving the email:
    Good morning “Pierre & Suzanne”. There is much merit in using this combination when dealing with either clients, church or clubs.
    Can one do this is GMass? The program looks promising. Thanks.

    1. Yes, for example you have columns 1 & 2 for name and email in your sheet.

      |__________Name_________ |______ Email______|
      |_________Pierre___________|[email protected]
      |________Suzanne__________|[email protected]
      |______Pierre & Suzanne____|[email protected]

      Sample compose window: Good Morning {Name},

      Mail sent to each of the email addresses will personalize that sample greeting with the corresponding name on the same row.

      1. Hello Marvin,

        I tried to send a test GMass campaign and it do not appear to personalize the peoples names for each recipient. It just says Hello {Name},
        Another thing which bothers me is – it went to the SPAM folder. I thied the same email address without gmass and without {}, the same text and it did not go to the SPAM in that case.

        How would you please address such issues.

        Best

        1. You can select the Column name from “Personalize” section or type as same as column name withing {} and it would work.

          Check if the column heading and field name withing {} are exactly same.

    1. Hi Arvind,

      We’ve responded to your ticket directly.

      Note that we do not limit our subscriptions, sending limits are imposed by Google.

  2. The add on did not include the names of recipients, even though it was in the spreadsheet. Why is this?

    1. Please contact our support team through http://gmass.co/g/support. Please include a screenshot of your draft along with the top part of your spreadsheet (include the header row and a few rows below it) to our support team.

      1. Hi Tony,

        The sending limit is something that is enforced by Gmail, not by GMass. According to Google, regular G Suite accounts are limited to 2,000. But other factors like the age of the account, content of the Campaign, or reputation of the domain can affect your sending limit.

        There’s some more information about these limits here:
        https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ ( https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-many-emails-can-you-really-send-with-gmass-and-gmail/ )  

        You can configure your account with an external SMTP server if you’d like to send unlimited emails without Gmail-imposed sending limits. See: https://www.gmass.co/blog/unlimited-mail-merge-sending-gmail/ ( https://www.gmass.co/blog/unlimited-mail-merge-sending-gmail/ )  

        You can isolate and resolve what’s causing your emails to go into the spam folder by using our Spam Solver tool (https://www.gmass.co/blog/spam-solver-tweaks-emails/)

  3. Once Gmass has populated the To field with the email addresses, do I have to keep the spreadsheet where those emails came from open OR can it be closed?

    What about when scheduling a future Gmass?

    1. Hi Dan,

      Yes, you may close your spreadsheet. GMass does not need the spreadsheet to be open to use it since you’ll be linking the spreadsheet initially. When you link a spreadsheet to a campaign, whether you’re sending now or scheduling a future campaign, that linking tells GMass which spreadsheet to use and retrieves data from that sheet for your mail merge.

  4. Can this be done as a blind CC so it doesn’t appear to be a mass emailing?

    Also, can I insert a specific subject line for each recipient? In my case I am offering to buy their rental property and want to put the address of that rental property in the subject line…they are more likely to open the email if they see that it actually pertains to them.

    1. Hi Mark,

      With GMass, you won’t need to BCC. Each of your recipients will receive a personalized email when sent through GMass.

      Yes, you can insert a specific subject line, greeting, and even content. You can do this by using a spreadsheet. You may read more by following the links below:

    2. https://www.gmass.co/blog/google-sheets-mail-merge/
    3. https://www.gmass.co/blog/mail-merge-personalization/
    4. https://www.gmass.co/blog/personalize-entire-paragraph-mail-merge/
  5. My company is switching from Outlook to Gmail. I use email merge on a regular basis, and merge more than just the greeting. For example, if we are holding an event with various sessions, I will email a reminder to all participants that says something like this:

    Dear {John}, Thank you for registering for session {3} and session {6} at the whatever event it is. You have chose {chicken} for lunch.

    Can I still do this with GMass? Am I able to simply pick fields from the spreadsheet like I can when using a Word doc and Excel to send my email merge?

    Thank you.

  6. Nice Blog. I am using GMass Tool, It is Really Powerful Email Marketing Tool. Thanks for Sharing This Tutorial.

    1. Hi Tabitha,

      Glad you like GMass. Regarding your sent folder, you can actually create a non-obtrusive text (that’s unique) to be used only in your campaigns not on your replies or regular emails. Something like _______________________________________ (a bunch of underscores) and create a filter to search in sent messages to automatically delete them.

      Please contact our support team at https://www.gmass.co/blog/how-to-get-support-from-the-gmass-team/. I’ll be happy to assist you directly if you have issues or need more detailed instructions.

  7. I want to send an email with 7 attachments to 50 separate emails and be sure they don’t wind up in someone’s spam folder. can you tell me how to TEST this? thank you.

  8. Hello it’s me, I am also visiting this web page daily,
    this site is genuinely pleasant and the visitors are genuinely sharing nice thoughts.

  9. Great work! That is the type of info that are supposed to be shared across the internet.
    Disgrace on the search engines for not positioning this submit higher!
    Come on over and visit my web site . Thanks =)

  10. I have 5600 emails to send my customers telling them that there is a new owner. Is there a maximum number of emails that I can send out daily?

  11. Hi, for some reason the spreadsheet I’m trying to send is not showing up so I cannot send anything. It says “no spreadsheet found”. I’m using a personal domain name to send these emails. Why is it not working? Thanks.

  12. Can you send the same info to multiple email addresses?

    For example, I do this for a school and would like to send the information from one child to both parents.

    Thanks

  13. Hi ,

    Can I send with attachments? Also my personalization is not working? Does numbers need to be in a specific formatting?

    1. Hi Julia,

      Yes, you can send attachments, however, personalized attachments are not yet supported so when you add an attachment, it will be attached to ALL emails sent for the campaign.

      Please contact our support team (gmass.co/g/support) so that we can assist you directly with the personalization issue you’re encountering. When emailing our support team, please include a screenshot of your Google Sheet (include the topmost row and a few rows below) to expedite troubleshooting the issue you’re encountering.

  14. I just wanted to say, “thanks!” for a great product + support / service

    Marvin, you are doing an excellent job responding to everyone’s q’s!!

    1. Hi Husain,

      Thank you for your kind words! If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at gmass.co/g/support

  15. I am having trouble with the personalized emails

    what I like to do is add information from my spreadsheet into the personalized mail

    I want to send i.s Dear Barb PO1234

    How can I do that

    I have three columns like first, last, po, email

  16. How do I offer the option to ‘unsubscribe’ to my emails? Any good email campaign should have that and maybe some other ‘clickable’ links contained in the email. I would love to be able to know how to do this. Can you help?

  17. This is a really good and simple set of instructions to set GMass up. I prefer using Gmail over any other email service so this will work perfectly for me:)

  18. Can it send email with different or unique file attachment to each unique recipients? For example a webinar e-certificates to a certain group of registered participants. I am currently using autocrat add-on but since the Google Workplace, it is no longer sending emails automatically. Thank you

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