Need to print a lot of labels. Need to stay sane.
August 28, 2015 4:46 AM   Subscribe

I purchased a pack of labels that are compatible with MS Word, but every time I try to print, the first row of labels come out fine and the rest are off by various amounts. I am printing to the massive printer/photocopier in my office. I have tried using the manual feed tray and every one of the cassettes but the same thing happens each time. Help?

After using off-brand labels with no template and having no success, I finally decided to get a pack of labels by a brand listed in MS Word. I am still having the same problem. The first row of labels are correct, the rest are off and aren't making it onto the labels themselves, but not in an easily-fixable way (e.g. by moving one margin everything will magically be resolved; it seems like every row has a mind of its own).

No idea if any of these details are relevant:
- each label has something different being printed on it
- I created the labels using mail merge (they appear fine on screen)
- everything appears fine in print preview
- I tried using the manual feed tray and the automatic feeder cassettes, same result from all
- The printer is a massive Xerox-type machine to which my computer is networked

Is it MS Word, the labels, or the printer?

I have a regular home printer that I can use, but I don't want to use up so much ink - I have 1,600 labels to print.

Anyone been through the same nonsense? Any idea how to fix it? All suggestions gladly entertained!
posted by gursky to Technology (13 answers total)
 
The printer, I'v e had the same trouble, but the same doc on a different printer doesn't do it.
posted by aetg at 4:54 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


Check the settings for paper size. One of them, somewhere, might be set to a different size than you are using (A4 versus letter size is the most common problem). Windows keeps its paper size settings in some unexpected spots.
posted by Too-Ticky at 5:06 AM on August 28, 2015


Sometimes when I'm printing mail merged labels under similar circumstances, this happens because of unintended scaling of the document by word. The workaround solution I've found to save it as a PDF and then, in the print options for the PDF, choose to print at "actual size."
posted by raisindebt at 5:12 AM on August 28, 2015 [5 favorites]


Are you using a template downloaded from the company that made the labels? Or a Word template?

Also in the past, I've printed test sheets on regular paper and held them up to the light with a sheet of blank labels behind it to see if they were fitting properly, saves wasting label sheets.
posted by TWinbrook8 at 7:04 AM on August 28, 2015 [4 favorites]


If the vertical spacing on all of your labels is off regardless of brand, do you think it could be your printer that's not feeding correctly (since it feeds in the vertical direction)?

Think of it this way, it pulls the paper up, prints the first label, needs to move down 1" to the next, but instead moves 1.1", then prints. It needs to move down another 1" to the third label, but moves 1.1" (now you're at 2.2" but should be at 2.0"). The inaccuracies pile up like so:

1.0 -> 1.1
2.0 -> 2.2
3.0 -> 3.3
4.0 -> 4.4
5.0 -> 5.5
6.0 -> 6.6

Which is why you can't just say "oh, I'm off by point six inches at the bottom, let me take that out and then everything will be fine".

You can either (1) try a different printer or (2) adjust the height of all rows by whatever the difference between expected and actual is. The easiest way to figure out where the problem lies is to turn on the cell borders (labels in Word are just tables) and print that on the labels, you should be able to easily measure how much you're off by. You might have to do it a few times to zero in because the reductions aren't one to one.
posted by Brian Puccio at 7:25 AM on August 28, 2015


Printing labels will drive you mad. Avery (the major label company) has a service called WePrint where they take care of the printing for you and mail you the labels. Might be worth it.
posted by radioamy at 7:56 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


Are you loading the labels with correct side as the top of the page?
posted by jaguar at 8:34 AM on August 28, 2015


To follow up with TWinbrook8 above, it looks like your printing is fine "on screen", but has it printed fine on paper? Plain paper, not labels. If not, then it's not the labels. PLUS, if not, then it's probably not the printer, its probably the formatting. For whatever reason, printing a table onto labels, even though it *should* work, sometimes doesn't work, because of spacing between the labels, or some other reasons. Use label templates if at all possible; worse comes to worst, you can customize the labels to fit what you have in Word.
posted by China Grover at 8:35 AM on August 28, 2015


Print on plain paper while you try various things, cut the paper in half vertically through a row of addresses, and put on top of a label sheet -- that's a lot cheaper than testing on labels.

One thing that may be happening is scaling -- it's not printing at 1:1, it's scaling to fit the page, in particular, its enlarging. See if there's a setting about that and turn it off -- for label printing to work properly, you have to layout 1:1.

A test you can do is to draw a box with exactly 1 inch margins on the page (or 2cm if you're in the real world) and print that, then measure. If you're not seeing 1"/2cm margins when you're printing, adjust your printing settings until you are.

Then try the labels with those settings (on plain paper until they're good, of course -- then start printing on label stock.)
posted by eriko at 8:54 AM on August 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


You might be able to go to Kinko's if you get in a pinch.
posted by heathrowga at 9:34 AM on August 28, 2015


Try printing on paper, then photocopy onto labels.
posted by theora55 at 10:52 AM on August 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


I've had a similar issue printing labels; my solution was to use the highest print quality setting, and try the different paper type settings until I found one that worked. Used photo paper settings IIRC.
posted by coldhotel at 2:53 PM on August 28, 2015


Response by poster: Thank you for the suggestions! (Still open to new ones...)

I have tried adjusting the paper size, how I load the paper, printing as a PDF, seeing if it prints right on plain paper... no luck. I will try my home printer and see if that fixes it. Otherwise, I'll find a printing place that can do it for me because my blood is boiling!
posted by gursky at 6:16 AM on August 31, 2015


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