Labels

Tips, Tricks, and Answers

The following articles are available for the 'Labels' topic. Click the article's title (shown in bold) to see the associated article.

Backing Up Label Layouts
If you've developed custom label layouts in Word, you may want to protect your investment. This tip discusses ways that you can back up those layouts so that they are available for another system or in case of system failure.

Changing Label Printing Order
When creating labels during a mail merge, the labels on a page are filled out from left to right and top to bottom. If you want the fill order to be different, you must make some changes to your data or use one of the other workarounds in this tip.

Changing Label Sizes
Information formatted for one type of label may someday need to be printed on a different type of label. Here's some techniques you can use to make the format change you need.

Creating Labels
Using Word to create and print labels is a snap. All you need to do is provide the text you want on the labels, pick a type of label, and then format the text to best fit the label you chose. This tip shows how to do it all, step by step.

Creating One-time Labels
How to create labels you will use only once.

Doubling Your Money
Make your money last longer by using your head when printing labels. Here's a great example of how you can double the usage you get from your labels.

Finding Long Lines
Word is very dynamic in how it "flows" text from one line to another and one page to another. In most cases we are willing to allow Word to do its job in this area. In some situations, however, you may need to know if a paragraph has flowed to a new line so that you can "force" it to fit all on one line. Making this determination is not as easy as you might like.

Formatting Labels
Need your labels to look a certain way? You can save time by formatting them before Word actually creates the sheet of labels. Here's how.

Getting Rid of Blank Labels in a Filtered Merge
If you are filtering a mail merge in Excel, and you get blank labels in the printout, chances are good that something is going wrong. (Filtering should suppress those blank labels.) This tip provides some guidance on what you should look for in your merge document to get the desired results.

Graphics in Address Labels
Learn how to add graphics to the address labels you print in Word.

Left and Right Aligned on One Line in a Label
If you need to put information on a label that has both left- and right-aligned information on the same line, it can be frustrating to get the formatting just right. Here's the steps you need to follow to get just what you need.

Making Use of Extra Labels
Got extra labels left over after printing a mail merge? Here's what you can do to put those labels to good use.

Picking a Starting Label
When doing a mail merge to labels, you may want to have the label document start with a label other than the first one. Word doesn't provide a way to do this, but there are a couple of things you can try to get the results you desire.

Printing Multiple Label Copies When Merging
When merging data into a Word document to create labels, you may want a way to create multiple copies of individual labels. There are two approaches you can take, as described in this tip.

Printing Return Address Labels
How to print return address labels using Word.

Saving Money on Printing Labels
Labels can be expensive, and a little common sense will help you waste less money as you try to get your labels to appear "just right." This tip provides a few ideas you can put to work right away.

Sequentially Numbered Labels
Need to create labels with sequential numbers? Here are some tips to get that accomplished.

Setting Default Label Formats
Setting default formats for envelopes is easy; setting them for labels is not so easy. Here are some ideas on things you can try to get your labels closer to how you want them.

Specifying a Label Stock for Saved Documents
When you create a document designed to be printed on a particular type of label stock, it might be helpful if Word remembered which label stock the document was designed for. Unfortunately, that information is not maintained with the document. You can, however, note the information so it is always available using one of the techniques in this tip.

Use Good Quality Labels
If you use the wrong kind of labels with your printer, you are asking for big trouble.

Using the Address Book
Ways to use the address book when printing envelopes and labels.

Vertically Centering Labels
Want the text printed on your labels to be centered vertically? It's not that hard, and this tip shows the easiest method.