Your Printer Capacity Also Matters
If your printer is formatted to print 8.5 x 11 sheets, generating a full sheet of the same label is pretty simple. Simply create a new document, choose a full sheet of labels, and enter the address. As a general rule, labels that print from Word need to go through a traditional printer, and traditional printers combine toner and heat to actually imprint the label. If you have smaller or traction labels, they will likely not be heat imprinted. You will probably need software for the data on the labels or some sort of link to enable you to select the text going on the label, copy it to the label printing software, and generate it.
Build a Database
If you need to generate full sheets of different labels, the simplest step will be to create a database in Excel. Once you have the fields defined, creating such a database can be quite useful; you can create both letters and labels from this database, add a column to track when the responses come back, and save changes on any letters that come back to you. Of course, you can also create a single sheet of labels and type in addresses individually. If you never need to track this information or reprint the same group or cluster of labels, this type of label generation is quite simple. However, this is a one-and-done process; you can save your page of labels, but it’s not a database, nor is it very flexible or usable in the future.
If You Need to Generate a Smart Mailing
For those who need to send out large mailings, the ability to generate labels with barcodes can increase accuracy and save money. Experts with Seagull Scientific can help you offer the best label software to make your mailings consistent, cost-effective and clean-looking. Another factor that can impact the cost of your total label mailing process will relate to waste. Feeding full sheets of labels into a traditional letterhead printer generally means that all the labels on the sheet are now wasted. Can you peel off the used labels and reprint the sheet to fill up the other labels? Technically, yes. However, if a loose edge catches, rolls up and gets caught on the toner drum, you can damage the drum, damage the printer, or make a huge mess when the toner drum spills. Labels are cheaper and less messy than toner. Learning to do a mail merge is one of those things that you can experiment with by printing to pdf until you get it right. It’s fiddly but a skill worth having. Once you can do a basic mail merge, you can learn to filter your database from within Word, which can give you even more control.
