Word's Mail Merge feature is the best approach for Christmas card labels. The tedious part of this can be typing out all of your addresses. If you use Outlook or a similar address book feature you will not have to do this, you can merge directly from your address book, (go straight to Step 3 below). If you have got to type out your addresses, start from Step 1.

Excel is the best program for typing out addresses. Why? Because of the AutoComplete feature. Quite a few of your friends and family will probably live in the same town and with Excel's AutoComplete feature you have only got to type each town once. That leaves more time for Christmas shopping and partying!!

Start a new workbook in Excel. Each part of the name and address needs to be in a separate column. In row 1 of the worksheet type a name that identifies each part of the addresses. I normally use: Title, First, Last, HouseName, StreetName, Town, PostCode. Make sure these are all in separate columns and press Tab to move from one to the next as you type them in. In the next row, type your first name & address. Carry on typing out all the addresses, making sure that you do not leave any blank columns and rows. If you want to sort the addresses by last name, click to make a cell active in the last name column and then click the Sort Ascending button on the Standard Toolbar. Save and close the file.

What's all this about AutoComplete? This will probably work best in the town column. Move into the town column and type the fist letter of a town you have already typed in one of the addresses above. Excel will offer to complete the town for you. If it is what you want press Tab or Enter, if not just carry on typing.

Always use Avery labels because these are already setup within Word, which is the program you use to print the labels. They can be a little bit more expensive than other laser labels but you won't waste one label. Your Avery labels will have a product number on the box and also on the top of each label, make a note of this.

Load Word and with a new blank document on the screen choose Mail Merge from the Tools menu. Choose Create, Mailing Labels and then Active Window. Now choose Get Data and then Open Data Source, in the "Files of Type" section of the dialog box choose *Excel Worksheets and then navigate your folder structure until you find the address list you have typed in Excel. Click to choose this file and then click the Open (or OK) button. Choose OK twice for use Entire Spreadsheet and Setup Main Document. You should now be in the Label Options dialog box. Make sure Avery A4 and A5 sizes appears in the Label Products section and now choose the Avery label you are using and choose OK. Now click the Insert Merge Field button and place the address fields on the label in normal address format, choose Merge and then Merge. Congratulations - you should now have your labels on the screen waiting to be printed.

It is quite a long process when you see it typed up, but next year, you just start with step 2 and after a couple of clicks should have your labels waiting to be printed.