Picking a Starting Label

When you create labels in Word, there are two ways you can do so. The first is to use the Labels feature (choose Envelopes and Labels from the Tools menu) and the second is to use the Mail Merge feature of Word. If you use the first method you can create a single label or a full sheet of the same labels. If you use the second method you can merge data from an external source to create however many sheets of labels you need.

If you are creating a single label using the Label feature, Word allows you to specify at which label position (column and row) you want the label. If you are dealing with full sheets or with the Mail Merge feature, however, you cannot pick the label at which you want printing to begin. For instance, if you have a sheet of thirty labels and the first ten have been used, you can't direct Word to start printing with the eleventh label on the sheet. There are a couple of ways you can get around this.

First of all, if you are only printing a couple of labels, you can often turn the sheet of labels around so that the bottom becomes the top. Thus, the "used" label spaces would be at the bottom of the sheet rather than at the top. Then, before printing, you could delete the information that would have printed in the used area. This approach is very handy if you are simply trying to use up the labels on a partial sheet, for instance as return address labels.

If you are using the Mail Merge feature of Word, there is another approach you can use: Insert blank records in your data source to compensate for the "used" areas of the label sheet. For instance, if you already removed ten labels from your sheet, then you could insert ten blank records into your data source, resort the records so the blank records are at the top, and then print your labels.

WordTips is your source for cost-effective Microsoft Word training. (Microsoft Word is the most popular word processing software in the world.) This tip (1555) applies to Microsoft Word 97, 2000, 2002, and 2003.