Maintaining Delivery Address Information for Envelopes

Don is having a problem using the envelope-printing feature of Word. To create an envelope, he displays the Envelopes tab of the Envelopes and Labels dialog box (See Figure 1.) and enters the address in the Delivery Address box. Once Don clicks the Print button, the address is sent to his printer and the dialog box closes. If for any reason the envelope is not printed (e.g., forgot to put envelope in printer, put envelope in the wrong way, etc.) Don has to re-enter the address because the Delivery Address box is empty the next time he displays the Envelopes and Labels dialog box. Don wondered if there was some way to tell Word to keep that address in the Delivery Address box until he is done with it.

Figure 1. The Envelopes tab of the Envelopes and Labels dialog box.

The short answer is that no, there is no way. However, there are some really easy things you can do to get that address back in the dialog box quickly, without the necessity of retyping. The first is to get in the habit of using the Clipboard. Just before you click the Print button, select all the text in the Delivery Address box and press Ctrl+C. The address is now in the Clipboard, and if you have to again display the Envelopes and Labels dialog box, you can click once in the Delivery Address box and press Ctrl+V to paste the address you previously saved.

An even handier way to handling the addressing of the envelope is to type the address in the Word document directly. Then select the address and display the Envelopes tab of the Envelopes and Labels dialog box. Whatever text you selected before displaying the dialog box (the address you typed) automatically appears in the Delivery Address box, ready for an envelope to be printed. If you click Print and the printing fails (or if you simply need to print a second envelope to the same address), then the address is still selected in the Word document, and you just need to display the dialog box to again print another envelope.

This naturally leads to a handy technique if you have a group of people to whom you regularly address envelopes. You can create a document that contains nothing but addresses. When you need to print an envelope to one of these regular contacts, just open the document, select the three or four lines of the appropriate address, and display the Envelopes tab of the Envelopes and Labels dialog box.

One thing you may consider if you print a lot of envelopes: Create a template for your envelopes. You can then just create a new document based on the template, modify the addresses you want on the envelope, and print. Some people find this approach much easier than messing with the frustrations of the Envelope and Labels dialog box.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (414) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003. You can find a version of this tip for the ribbon interface of Word (Word 2007 and later) here: Maintaining Delivery Address Information for Envelopes.