Making thank-you cards easy

Embarrassing confession: for whatever reason, I always struggle with thank-you cards. My excuse is that the effort involved in getting Christmas cards out to family and friends around the world leaves me so exhausted that I can't even think about thank-you cards until February, by which time they're out of date and not worth doing.

This year, I've put Office Online on the case and as you'd expect, it's looking a lot easier!

First of all, there's a thank-you card template. There were hundreds of templates that came back when I searched for "thank you card" but this was the only one that had the quarter-fold approach that I was after. (Although I've just discovered there is also a similar photo greeting card available which is also quite handy.)

Yes, the template is a bit dated (and it certainly demonstrates how much Microsoft Office has improved the graphics in recent versions) but it's going to be fine as a starting point. I'm going to edit it so that the cover has a different graphic (probably a family Christmas photo) and being really efficient (ok, I mean really lazy!), I'll also look to use mail merge to customise the text for each recipient.

Then all I need to do is sign the cards and send them -- and even I can get that done before Blue Monday.