This week someone asked me how to make and print out labels in Microsoft Word, so I thought I’d post a little tutorial on how to do it.
First, go to the ‘Mailings’ tab. On the very left-hand side, there’s a group called ‘Create’. Click the ‘Labels’ button.
The ‘Envelopes and Labels’ dialog box will come up. Here’s where you need to tell Word exactly which labels you’re using, in order to properly set up the page. Click the ‘Options’ button. Now, take a look at your sheet of labels. Somewhere on the sheet itself, or on the packaging, it should identify the brand name and an identifying product number. Select the brand name from the ‘Label vendors’ drop-down list, and then scroll through and select the appropriate product number from the list just below it. For example, I often use Avery #05161 labels. I choose ‘Avery US Letter’ as the label vendor, then scroll through the list and choose ‘5161 Easy Peel Address Labels’. The names might not match up exactly, but you can check the label dimensions in the ‘Label information’ area of the window to make sure that it’s the right label and page size if you’re not sure.
I’m not going to go through the “how-to” details of creating a custom label in this post, but advanced users can go ahead and click the ‘New Label’ button and create their own label if they’re unable to find what they need in the main list. There are hundreds of different label templates included within Microsoft Word, however, so I’m just going to assume that you will be able to find the one you need.
Once you’ve selected your label, click the ‘OK’ button. Now you’ll be back at the ‘Envelopes and Labels’ dialog box. If you want every label on the page to be the same, go ahead and enter the information you’d like to appear in the ‘Address’ text box (don’t get confused - it doesn’t have to be an address, it’s just labeled this way). Skip this step if you’d like to manually enter your labels.
Once you’re ready, click the ‘New Document’ button. A new document will be created and it will include a table with the same dimensions as your labels. Each cell in the table is one label. Go ahead and edit the document as much as you like, being careful not to adjust the table dimensions in any way. You can change the fonts, add or remove text, and even add in graphics.
When you’re satisfied with your labels, go ahead and print them! All printers are different, so I won’t be able to explain how this will work for everyone… but often, you need to adjust the settings to accommodate the labels. You generally are going to want to switch the paper source to come from a manual paper feed, and the paper type to ‘labels’. Make sure you’ve aligned the labels properly in your printer, or you might end up printing on the back of the page by mistake.
If you’re not sure if you’ve set it up properly and you don’t want to waste any sheets of labels, try printing a test set on a regular piece of paper and see if it comes out properly.
That’s all for today – it’s Remembrance Day here in Canada, so please remember to take a moment this morning to remember and thank our veterans for everything they’ve done for us. (Thank you, Grandpa!)
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