It’s strange. You’d think that Microsoft would make it easy to print mailing labels. Well, they do make it easy to print an entire page of the SAME mailing labels, but how do you print a page of DIFFERENT mailing labels?
Here’s how:
- Start Microsoft Word 2003.
- From the menu bar select [Tools] > [Letters and Mailings] > [Mail Merge]. (That’s right! Choose [Mail Merge] and not [Envelopes and Labels]. Weird.)
The wizard will open in the Task Pane to the right. You can get back to the Task Pane in the future from the [View] menu or by pressing CTRL+F1.
- Step 1 Choose [Labels]. Click [Next].
- Step 2 Under [Label Options] choose the correct format for your labels. The product number should be listed on the label page such as ‘Avery Standard 5163’. Click [Next].
- Step 3 Select your recipient list. This must usually be a spreadsheet or database. You are probably safe accepting the default choices, but if the preview doesn’t look right you may need to reselect your list and change some options. Click [OK]. Click [Next].
- Step 4 Select [More Items] and insert each of the database fields one at a time. Click [Close]. Click in between the database fields (between >> and <<) to separate them using the enter key. (This formats the label so that the address information appears on three (or four) lines which is the post office standard.) Click [Update all labels] to replicate your label format to all of the other labels locations. Click [Next].
- Step 5 Preview your labels. If everything looks right, click [Next]. If not, use the [Previous] links to go back and make changes.
- Step 6 This is a good step to finish formatting your labels. From the [Edit] menu select [Select All] to select all of your labels. Now you can make changes to the font, size, and other properties of all of your labels at the same time. When you are finished formatting, click [Print].