# Create a Personal Yearbook in 10 Minutes with Apple Tools
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Chapter 1: Introduction to Apple Productivity
In today’s fast-paced world, why spend hours copying and pasting when you can let Apple Pages and Numbers handle it for you, and in a smarter way?
Despite the decline of the FiloFax, the plethora of weekly, daily, and monthly templates available on Pinterest indicates that many still appreciate the tactile experience of planning their lives within a physical book. If you own an iPhone, iPad, or Mac, you can create your own personalized planner quickly and at no cost.
And it doesn't have to be bland. You can design it to be as attractive or as quirky as you desire. Do you want to highlight birthdays? That’s easy! Perhaps you’d like an inspirational image of your pet on each page? You can absolutely do that as well.
You can categorize your planner by any time frame that suits you. For the purpose of this guide, I’ll focus on weeks, but you could just as easily create a daily planner or even a quarterly one. The possibilities are endless, so let your creativity flow!
What makes this possible is the magic of mail merge. Are you unfamiliar with mail merge? It was quite popular back in the 1930s. Let me explain how it works.
Included in this guide are:
- Step-by-step instructions on how to locate, set up, and execute a mail merge.
- Helpful videos that simplify the process even further.
- Downloadable template files to kickstart your project.
This method can be used for generating any repetitive document in a quick and efficient manner. Best of all, there's no need to learn scripting or programming.
All you’ll need is:
- An iPhone, iPad, or Mac equipped with Pages and Numbers.
- A basic understanding of the events in your life over the next year.
- A spare 10 minutes and a cup of coffee with a snack of your choice.
What is Mail Merge?
Remember the days when most communication was done via postal mail, followed by email? People used to receive letters that were nearly identical except for their name and address. Creating unique documents for each recipient was impractical, which is where mail merge came into play.
You would draft a document with placeholders for names, addresses, and other variables, and then use a mail merge tool to create what appeared to be individualized letters. While it was clear these were merely entries in a spreadsheet, the utility of mail merge was undeniable.
Most word processors, including Apple Pages, have built-in mail merge capabilities. Although Apple initially left this feature out in its revamped Pages, it has now made a comeback.
As you might expect, Pages can extract names and addresses from your Contacts, but it also has an added feature: it can use Numbers as a data source, allowing you to utilize any data that Numbers supports.
What are we planning to do with this feature?
We’re going to create a yearbook organized week by week. Each page will display the starting date of the week and its corresponding week number, along with important events like holidays and personal goals.
Creating the Pages Template
You can download the template from my website. For now, let’s focus on the layout for each week rather than merging data. The starting date and week number should be positioned at the top left, with events and goals listed below.
This step involves straightforward text entry and formatting. I made the week’s starting day a heading and the week number a caption. To enhance the visual appeal, I added a background to the Pages document. This is easily done by creating an A4-sized PDF and setting it as the background image in Document Settings.
Creating the Spreadsheet
You can download the spreadsheet template from my website. The Numbers spreadsheet includes a table labeled “weeks” with the following fields:
- WeekStarts: The date when the week begins.
- WeekNumber: Yes, you guessed it!
- Events: This is where you’ll list the week’s events. You can add line breaks using +
- Goals: Similar to events.
Here’s a glimpse of the template:
To make everything work, we need to determine:
- The date on which the new year starts.
- The week number for any planned events.
Numbers can easily manage this, so check out the Week Finder table.
Want to add an event for June 23, 2023? Just type it into B2.
Curious about the starting date for any given date? Enter it into B5.
The spreadsheet mechanics may look a bit convoluted, so I’ve hidden some rows. Essentially, I use a Numbers function to determine the day of the week and subtract that (minus 1) from the specified date.
Use the Week Finder to add events as you see fit. Feel free to get creative!
Performing the Mail Merge
With the Numbers template prepared, go back to Pages. You need to select:
- The three dots in the top right corner.
- Mail Merge.
- The plus sign.
- "Add from Spreadsheet."
Locate the spreadsheet you just created (or downloaded) and choose the weeks table. Tap Done.
Return to the main document. Delete the placeholder text for the week start and leave the cursor there. Go back to Mail Merge and tap the plus sign again. Select WeekStarts to add the merge field. Repeat this for the other fields.
Check out this video for a visual guide.
Now it’s time to execute the mail merge!
Pages will do its magic and allow you to preview the merged file. You’ll find the completed file in the same folder as your Pages and Numbers documents. Each week will be a separate section in Pages. If you highlight the start of each week, you’ll notice a section marker that can be deleted if desired.
What Comes Next?
While creating a yearbook may seem like a straightforward application, this method can be applied whenever you need to generate repetitive blocks of text. What other uses can you think of for this technique?