Print Avery labels from Google Docs for free on a Mac?
December 3, 2021 7:17 PM   Subscribe

How do I print Avery labels from Google Docs for free, he asks, with just a few weeks to go until Christmas? Is the Avery "Design & Print with Google" web app the only way?

We used to export the Google Sheets document as a spreadsheet and open locally in Excel -- but my wife's new Mac doesn't have Office.

There are Google Docs Add-Ins but they aren't free.

How does this work now?
posted by wenestvedt to Computers & Internet (10 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
Response by poster: This appears to be a detailed explanation of the Avery web app: https://alicekeeler.com/2021/07/25/free-create-avery-address-labels-in-google-docs/

After a quick glance at that, my wife picked up a pen to hand-address them...
posted by wenestvedt at 7:18 PM on December 3, 2021


Not even sure this would work but if your wife's Mac has Numbers you may be able to do it with Avery's software for the Mac (have not tried but looks promising)
posted by jessamyn at 7:34 PM on December 3, 2021


The new Mac has Pages which is the Mac equivalent of Word — and you can download the templates from the Avery Labels website (random example) for Pages — then download the Google spreadsheet as an Excel doc — but you can then open that in Numbers the Mac equivalent of Excel. Same process just different program names on a Mac. I randomly have to make labels at work and usually just download the templates directly from the Avery website in the format needed.
posted by blacktshirtandjeans at 7:55 PM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


You can print address labels directly from the MacOS Contacts app. The tedious part will be getting all your names and address into that app if you don't have them in there (or on your iPhone) already.

Once you have a list, highlight the names to print, choose Print, then choose Style: Mailing Labels. Under the Layout tab there will be a box to choose which Avery label family you are using (e.g. I use #5161, the 10 row x 2 column sheet).

Then just print away.
posted by JoeZydeco at 7:56 PM on December 3, 2021 [3 favorites]


We used to export the Google Sheets document as a spreadsheet and open locally in Excel -- but my wife's new Mac doesn't have Office.

LibreOffice has predefined label templates (File->New->Labels, fill in Brand and Type, click New Document) and also lets you define additional label formats if it doesn't already know about the kind you're working with, so if you're comfortable with a traditional mail-merge workflow you could just use that. It should have no trouble importing a downloaded Google Sheet as a database table, as long as you've saved it in some well-known format like ODS or XLSX, and it's cross-platform so the very same procedures will work for you regardless of which OS your computer of the day happens to have.
posted by flabdablet at 8:06 PM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


Use Home | LibreOffice - Free Office Suite - Based on OpenOffice - Compatible with Microsoft. There are Mac/Windows/Linux versions. They read Excel sheets (among other things all Office Suite Like). There's a Menu->File->New->Labels dialog that supports Avery stuff. So pretty much the same way you did before.

On Edit: jinx
posted by zengargoyle at 8:08 PM on December 3, 2021 [2 favorites]


An acquaintance recently made labelo.us for this very purpose! Copy-paste addresses from Google docs!
posted by homodachi at 10:06 PM on December 3, 2021 [4 favorites]


Oh hey, labelo.us has a Twitter where they posted a 40-second video on how it works.
posted by homodachi at 10:57 PM on December 3, 2021 [1 favorite]


The web version of Microsoft Office is free.
posted by oceano at 12:12 AM on December 4, 2021


Avery can handle an uploaded spreadsheet to do a mail merge, then you can export as a pdf and print wherever you want.

Edit to say, this is not their design and print with Google service. It's their regular template to printer option, very easy to use.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:23 AM on December 4, 2021 [1 favorite]


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