Chai's Blog

Back­ground

So far the only print­ing I am versed with is plain vanil­la print­ing on A4 paper. There are few vari­a­tions like print­ing in colour or print­ing A3 sheets. But these vari­a­tions are not dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent to what I already know.

Today I took charge to print some labels. I haven’t print­ed a label until now and I prob­a­bly won’t have to print labels again until long time. I haven’t found a page on the Web that explains up to step by step pre­ci­sion. So here is an attempt to cap­ture the gained knowl­edge.

I am sure you are smart enough to get the gist and adjust the steps to suit to your soft­ware and hard­ware set­up.

Hard­ware and Soft­ware Need­ed

1. Win­dows 7 PC
2. Avery Quick­PEEL labels. Nor­mal A4 paper will do but that needs cut­ting labels man­u­al­ly as opposed just peel­ing off. And need glue to stick them on the con­sign­ment man­u­al­ly.
3. Microsoft Word 2010
4. Print­er

Steps to Print

Open Microsoft Word. [Pro tip: Quick­est way to open Microsoft Word is to Press Win­dows + R, type win­word. Hit Enter.]

Open Mail­ings menu -> Labels , Enter label text in the Labels tab of the opened Envelopes and Labels dia­log.

Click on Options… to open Label Options dia­log.

Select Page Print­ers and then appro­pri­ate Tray. Tray might be dif­fer­ent depend­ing on num­ber of trays on your print­er. But Label Ven­dors and Prod­uct Num­bers are stan­dard if you are using Avery Quick­PEEL address­ing labels.

Click OK on Label Options dia­log to return to Envelopes and Labels dia­log.

Click on New Doc­u­ment on Envelopes and Labels dia­log. A new doc­u­ment will be cre­at­ed with 8 X 3 grid with label text in each cell as shown in the fol­low­ing par­tial screen­shot.

At this stage you can adjust the Font and Cell Align­ment as need­ed. If you are using Avery labels then font can’t be so big that the labels over­flow into next page. All labels need to be on the same page so they will be print­ed on label sheet because ulti­mate­ly you are going to peel them off to stick else­where. This is not a prob­lem if you are print­ing on nor­mal A4 page.

Go to File menu and select Print. Ensure Print One Sided and Por­trait Ori­en­ta­tion. Choose Copies.

Before hit­ting Print, ensure either tray is emp­ty [in which case Print­er com­plains about emp­ty tray so you get an oppor­tu­ni­ty to place the Avery label sheet in the tray] or the first sheet in the select­ed tray is Avery label sheet. The tray is what you chose in the Label Options dia­log above. In my exam­ple I used Tray 5.

Hit Print and see print­er bliss­ful­ly dis­pens­ing your label sheet with your cho­sen label text imprint­ed on each one of 24 labels (For Avery label sheets) in 8 by 3 grid. Now peel them off and stick them wher­ev­er!

My print­er ini­tial­ly refused to accept the placed label sheet cit­ing either page size or ori­en­ta­tion is incor­rect how­ev­er it even­tu­al­ly relent­ed when I adjust­ed the flaps that sur­round the paper in the tray.

Cred­its:

1. A col­league who sup­plied Avery Quick­PEEL sheets and lit­tle back­ground on label print­ing.
2. This About.com video didn’t spoon-fed me but helped me get the idea.