Bone To Pick with Apple Over Mail Merge

I just finished printing out 200 envelopes and labels over the weekend. I do this project on average 4-5 times a year for parties and holidays. Late last year, Apple released Pages 5.0 (equivalent to Microsoft Word) and for some reason, they decided to leave out the ability to use Mail Merge. Mail Merge is a feature that Word has had for over two decades now. It allows you to create word processing documents that utilizes data from a numbers (excel) spreadsheet and contact data from your address book. The data is extracted from each cell or card with just one click, saving you from many minutes of copying and pasting. 

With the omission of mail merge in Pages 5.0, I now have spend extra time working on printing labels for cards and invites. I would say at least an extra half hour depending on the quantity of recipient from the project. Trust me that time adds up now, especially with 3 kids running around the house. I find that I am stopping and going with project like these more often. I’ve tried to hunt online for a reason to why Apple removed the feature along with over 90 other features in Pages. I found nothing definitive. There were postings of customers contact support via phone and the reps were just as stunned to find out the feature was removed. 

Personally I am hoping it was just a major oversight the redesigning of the application and it will be brought back in it’s next major release. One can only hope right? I hate to have to install a microsoft product on my computer, again!