Print personalised address labels in Word

The starting point is to buy some labels. These are available for both laser and inkjet printers and can be purchased from any stationery supplier or computer shop and from high-street supermarkets. Although Microsoft Word can be customised to handle labels arranged on the page in any configuration, you will make life a lot easier by buying one of the popular brands that Word can use without modification. To view these, start Word and click on the Tools menu followed by Letters and Mailings, and then Envelopes and Mailings. If using Word 2007, click Mailings, then Labels.

Select the Labels tab, then the Options button to display the Label Options dialogue box. In this dialogue box, click in the Label products panel (Label vendors if using Word 2007) to view a dropdown menu of the different makes of label that Word supports. Select a maker and then look in the Product number section to view the label layouts available. We chose Avery A4 number J8363, which is an A4 layout comprising two columns of seven labels. For the purpose of completing the Workshop you can choose the same ones and print them out on plain paper.

Having selected a label layout, click OK to view the Envelopes and Labels dialogue box. To print a sheet of identical labels, locate the Print section of the dialogue box and select Full page of the same label, then click in the Address section and type the text you wish to print on each label. When typing the labels, press the Enter key to start a new line, as you would in a standard Word document. Having typed all the text for the label, click the New Document button.

Word creates a new document containing multiple identical labels of the same design. To change their appearance, modify them all at the same time by clicking the Edit menu and then Select All. Alternatively, use the Ctrl and A keyboard shortcut (hold down the Ctrl key and tap A) for the same effect. The commands on the formatting toolbar can then be used to change the font style, size and alignment for every label.

In this example the labels contain the single word ‘Fragile’ and they have been formatted as Arial Bold, size 48, text colour red and with each line centred. Similar labels can be made with warnings such as Urgent, Handle with Care or This Way Up. Once the labels have been suitably formatted, print them by using the Ctrl and P shortcut and click OK. The first time you print a new set of labels you might wish to try a dummy run on blank paper or use the Page Preview command on the File menu.

To save the labels, click on the File menu and select Save, then type a name for the labels in the File name panel and click Save again. To close the newly saved labels, click on the File menu and then Close. Although this closes the labels it leaves on screen the original document from which they were created. This can be closed in the same way. If you ever need to print the same set of labels, simply open them as an ordinary Word document and print. They do not need to be created all over again.

Creating a mixed sheet of labels where each one has a different design starts in much the same way as creating a set of identical labels, but in Step 3 do not type anything into the Address section. Click New Document to create a blank set of labels. Type the text for the first label and then press the Tab key to move on. If the labels are arranged in two or more columns, the text cursor disappears into the gap between the columns, so press Tab a second time to move to the next column.

When the cursor is in the right-hand column, pressing Tab moves it to the left-hand column on the next line. Proceed in this way until all the labels have been filled in. To start a new page, press Tab after typing the last label on the current page and proceed similarly until all the labels have been completed. If desired, every label can be given the same appearance by selecting them all, as described in Step 4, and applying formatting using the controls on the Formatting toolbar.

To format labels individually, select the contents of a label in the usual way by clicking at the beginning of its text and holding down the left mouse button while dragging the cursor to the end of its text. When the left mouse button is released, the text is highlighted in black (as with the ‘Assorted brass screws’ label in the example) and can then be formatted without affecting any of the other labels by using the commands on the Formatting toolbar.

To print labels with a coloured background, click on the Format menu and select Backgrounds, and then choose a colour. This is an all-or-nothing decision because it is not possible to change the backgrounds of individual labels or of individual sheets. The finished labels can be saved as described in Step 6 and later re-opened as an ordinary Word document, when can be reprinted in their original format or modified as desired.