Comments on: Printing Labels, Mailing List & Envelopes in Mac OSX with Address Book

By: Stacey Trim

Stacey Trim — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 04:05:59 +0000

How do I print a mailing label that doesn’t have a postal code. I just want it in the mailing label size but all I want on the actual label is name, e-mail, phone number and website. It just shows up blank if there’s no postal code. ahhh!

By: Michele Stapleton

Michele Stapleton — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 22:40:35 +0000

Finally found how to save a custom envelope preset. And it’s NOT under the Presets Tab where it should logically be.

You do it in the Layout tab.

After you’ve selected your orientation, and after you make all your selections under the lable tab, click on Layout and make any changes you want in that pane. Then, underneath the Layout Tab there is another menu also named Layout. Here is the option to save your settings as a custom setting.

Too bad Apple didn’t issue help notes on how to save a custom setting. I must have wasted two hours trying to figure this thing out. Argh.

By: Michele Stapleton

Michele Stapleton — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:33:05 +0000

Well, dangit. I spoke too soon. That did NOT save my presets!

Anyone know how to save presets? I’m going to be a very unhappy camper if everytime I want to type an envelope I have to go in there and change the orientation (so the envelope will fit through my printer) and change the font to match my marketing.

Surely Apple didn’t give us a printing pane without a way to save default settings?

By: Michele Stapleton

Michele Stapleton — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:25:39 +0000

You might go one step farther and tell readers how to set this up as a default/preset so they don’t have to go through all the steps each time they want to print a single envelop.

I selected all the settings, then I clicked on “Advanced.” That took me to a regular print dialog box for my printer. Where it says “Presets” I scrolled down to “Save As” and I named my special setting “Envelopes from Address Book” and then clicked ok.

Now when I try to print an envelope from the Address book, one of the presets will be the one I just saved.

By: Tracey

Tracey — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 17:13:00 +0000

Is there a way to print spouse and children’s names when printing a list out of address book?

By: Misha Weidman

Misha Weidman — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 20:54:19 +0000

Though I’ve been an Apple devoté for decades, Address Book’s printing functions are not up to Apple’s standards. There is NO way to position labels on a partially used sheet. There’s just no excuse for this.

Here’s the best Apple software I’ve found for handling labels. It’s called pearlLabelizer, it’s freeware, and well-integrated with Address Book. Very straight-forward, but worth the 5 minutes or so to read the Help Manual:

http://www.pearworks.com/pages/software.html

By: Nancy

Nancy — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:45:30 +0000

Is there any way to print on Avery labels (or other brand) without using address book? I use the labels for other purposes … on the backs of some of my photos, labeling items in my house etc. I can’t seem to find any way to do this on Pages or using address book.

By: Sue

Sue — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 21:47:18 +0000

I am having a problem with mailing labels. When I go to print mailing labels, some of the labels have additional information added to the first and last name line. When it happens, this information is always the last person listed in the child, sister, brother, etc. information on the card. I am not sure why most of the labels are correct and just some are doing this. Since I see no way to edit what is printing on the label, I don’t know how to fix this problem. Thanks for any help you can give.

By: Kelvin

Kelvin — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:06:21 +0000

I got a problem to print the return address on envelope, under the “Label” the “print my address” checkbox is grayed out.

By: Melissa

Melissa — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 00:06:48 +0000

Vincent,
THANK YOU SO MUCH! That video was awesome! It really, really helped me figure out how to use mail merge on the mac. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your help and how many hours of frustration you saved me from! I was even able to print an envelope with a picture of my son over the return address.
Thanks again, and Happy Holidays!
Melissa

By: David Boullata

David Boullata — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 14:24:10 +0000

To print “return address” labels using Apples Address Book 1) create a ‘new group’ with you as the only person in the group. 2) Copy and paste your address over and over until you have 20 or 30 (depending on the kind of label sheet you’re using) copies of your address. Then print that group the usual way. You’ll have a sheet full of return address labels ready to be placed on cards an packages.

By: Vincent Roman

Vincent Roman — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 17:49:12 +0000

Melissa -

You might like to view the following video how-to which I just found:

http://www.wonderhowto.com/how-to/video/how-to-use-mail-merge-with-a-numbers-document-in-pages-09-278676/

Best, Vincent -

By: Melissa

Melissa — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 01:43:27 +0000

Vincent, Thanks so much for the tip. I successfully exported my numbers spreadsheet into a cvs format into address book! Yay! However, when I merged it into the envelope template in pages it only showed the name line. Guess I have a merging problem. Any advice? Also, is there a way to add Mr & Mrs to the name line? Thanks so much for your help!!!

By: DWY

DWY — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 22:15:32 +0000

I am right now trying to print Christmas envelopes and can’t get it right. I ended up using the following: 1) Printed my Christmas group onto Avery 5267 labels via address book 2) Created a custom template in Pages to print my return address onto the same Avery 5267 label page.

This was the only way I could get this to work. I was unable to print my return address using the above described process, it would only print a single label at a time. I was also unable to get the Christmas card template to work via address book with the card stock. For some reason, the return address kept getting cut off and the address was placed oddly on the card. Yes, I tried fiddling with the settings but after a while it was just easier to print labels.

There has to be a better way to get all of this to work. I fail to believe that anyone could run a business with such gapping holes in seemingly simple and essential tasks.

By: Vincent Roman

Vincent Roman — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:55:54 +0000

From what I can tell pages will only import form address book. I could be wrong, requires further investigation, as I do not have pages on this computer. If it doesn’t I would suggest export to a CSV (comma separated values) file from ‘SAVE AS’ in the ‘File’ menu and then trying to import that into address book, and then doing a mail merge from there. Best, Vincent -

By: Melissa

Melissa — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 20:45:45 +0000

I spent hours creating an up to date contact list in numbers. I do not want to spend countless additional hours inputing contacts one at a time into address book. Can I merge my numbers spreadsheet contact list directly to the envelope document in pages? Or can I import all of my contacts into address book at once? I really appreciate the help. I am a new Mac user. I have the Mac Book Pro OS X. Thanks.

By: Vincent

Vincent — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 22:47:26 +0000

Is it not possible to create your own custom label format?

By: Ken H (kbmh)

Ken H (kbmh) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:34:52 +0000

I think I’ve found an answer to our problems.
The free OpenOffice suite of programs enables you to use Address Book as the data source for mail merges. It does this by copying the Address Book, or a selected Group from it, to an OpenOffice database, which OpenOffice Writer then uses in its normal Mail Merge. Details of how to do the copying are on this web page:

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/MacOSX:_Address_book_integration

The page also describes how to do a mail merge, but I think it may be out of date as I found it didn’t exactly tie up with my experience.

The only drawback of this method appears to be that I don’t think the extracted database will keep track of any subsequent changes in Addrss Book, so that you will have to recreate the database before each mail merge.

By: Richard

Richard — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:23:47 +0000

I purchased Avery 8195 blank labels because they are the size I want. They are supposed to print four columns of 15 labels each.

But 8195 isn’t on the list of Address Book templates. What to do?

By: Ken H (kbmh)

Ken H (kbmh) — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 23:07:06 +0000

I have same problems as a lot of other folk with mailing labels – I just want to be able to define the fields in each label and their layout – e.g. use Nameline not First and Last as the first line, put Postcode (= Zip code) on the same line as State, and so on. No chance. Means for me Address book will be useless unless the freeware app Address Book Exporter from glenhiver.net will export a csv file for me under (Snow) Leopard. Can’t believe Address Book falls down so badly on this one.