No left margin when Mail Merging labels

[wardmiller]

Using Office 2010 I just did a Mail Merge using data from an Excel file to print address labels on Avery 5160 label sheets. Everything worked just fine, except there was no left margin on the labels. The first character of each line printed partly off the label.



After wasting some label sheets, I corrected the problem by adding three spaces at the left end of each line. But that should not have been necessary. What went wrong?

[macropod]

Are you sure you've specified the same size label stationery (A4 vs Letter) for the document that you're feeding into the printer? If so, it's also possibly there's a mis-alignment of the stock in your paper tray or that you have a faulty printer driver.

[wardmiller]

Paul, Letter size is specified and the paper is properly located in the tray. But in the process of insuring the Letter size was proper on the Label Options dialog box (Word|Mailings|Start Mail Merge|Labels) I clicked on the Details button. That brought up all the detailed measurements for the Avery 5160 Label.

This shows a picture of a label and all the measurements are described (Height, Width, etc) and the actual measurement values are shown, with the ability to change them. Side Margins is show as the distance from the left edge of the label to the left edge of the label backing sheet. The side margin for this label is 1.9". Nowhere does it show where the actual printing will take place. If printing a line begins after the margin, it will print the first character on the edge of the label (partly on the backing sheet, partly on the label).

It looked like all I had to do was increase the value of the side margin. But that would slide the pitch measurement (distance from left edge of a label to the left edge of the label to the right) and that would then double the margin for the next label and triple the margin for the last label on the row.

Somewhere it must be specified how far down from the top edge of the label the printing shall begin, and how far in from the left, but this is not the place. Do you have any idea where that is? Bring up that Label Options Details... and you will see what I have described above.

In the meantime, I'll just add three spaces at the beginning of each line.

[macropod]

Instead of changing the labels, you can change the cell borders and/or paragraph indents. For the former, click anywhere on the labels and choose Table Tools>Layout>Properties>Options and adjust the margins. For the latter, select the whole table and use Home>Paragraph>Indents and Spacing to change the left and/or right indents.

[wardmiller]

OK, Paul, I'll try that. Thanks for pointing it out.

But I still think the basic label implementation is wrong. You don't have to play around vertically with where the first line prints, why should you have to screw around horizontally with where it prints?

Were you around when PC-FILE was the only database program? Maybe 25 or 30 years ago? With that you could center the data on the label, top to bottom, left to right. Later, with dBASE and Crystal prints the whole process of label printing was a slam dunk. Seamless. Now with Mail Merge it is less than intuitive and clumsy, but it is about the only game in town so I'm glad for small favors. <g>

[macropod]

I don't know that "the basic label implementation is wrong". For all I know - and you've not posted anything to indicate otherwise - the problem may be with your printer, its setup and/or drivers. A web search suggests the problems you're having are not common with the Avery 5160 label (most of the people having problems have issues with the vertical alignment (definitely a printer/driver issue), not the horizontal alignment).

Two more settings you should check are:
• that in the Zoom section of the File Print dialog, the Scale to paper size is set to No Scaling; and/or
• that the option for "Scale content for A4 or 8.5 x 11’ paper sizes", under File|Options|Advanced>Print is not checked. However, this shouldn't matter if you're using the correct page size in Word.