I have a A4 UV flatbed printer and I need to print over flat objects like phone cases, Keychains, Tags, Vintage physical media ..etc.



I was able to use Mailing template design in MS Word and it works good, However I'm still struggling with edges and corners. In other words, Word creates rectangular labels with sharp corners, so when I insert the artwork into the label panel I get a rectangular artwork with sharp corners, How do I configure the template to have shaped panels (for example with round corners) that correspond to the shape of the object so the printer won't print outside the object?

Are you printing multiple labels or is each printing a single item?

If it is, you may be better off using a shape as a text box and positioning it on the page to print onto your object.

Sometimes same artwork for all objects, sometimes mixed. Can explain in details what you have just said?

For just one, do not use the label feature at all.
Create and use the shape you want under Insert Shape.
You can have rounded corners, ovals and some fairly weird shapes.
You can double-click on those and add text.
You can give a picture fill, etc.


Position it on the page to print properly with your printer.


Otherwise, if using labels, you are stuck with rectangles because labels are tables and table cells are always rectangles.


You can, if you want, put a shape inside the label, just as you can any graphic.
Graphics on labels by Graham Mayor, MVP

Thanks,
Those pre-loaded shapes don't work for me, I need to design my own shape with specific outline shape and dimensions, I know people use Adobe illustrator and photoshop but I'm not willing to buy those software since I don't do a lot of design stuff, I just want basic application to shape up the picture to avoid wasting ink on rectangular printouts.

My next option is probably edit the artwork in paint to white out all other parts of the rectangle that are not part of the artwork and hopefully when the print software sees white it prints nothing, and I believe there is a manual cut out feature in Paint, But all these manual processes take time.

If you are inserting artwork into table cells, why does Word need to do the odd shaped border? Don't you create that border in the program you are creating the artwork in?

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Because the artwork is just a rectangular picture, But I just came to the same realization that word doesn't have to do that, I actually used Paint's free form select feature and followed the shape on the picture by drawing the outline manually with the mouse's cursor and copied it and saved it and the resulting picture seem to have been cropped to the desired shape, But I have to do this for every artwork vs if I have a pre shaped window and throw any artwork behind it.

It would be nice to have a pre shaped window and just insert images behind it but that seem to be a hard goal to achieve without getting into expensive design software.

I'm no fan of Paint and would highly recommend you use something other than that to create graphics. There are plenty of free options with more power than MS Paint.
Paint.NET is a far better bitmap editor
Inkscape or Draw.IO are options to do vector graphics or labels.

Word is only useful if you are using those labels as artwork and either:

1. Doing a mail merge with other changeable text
2. Printing onto particular sticky label sizes and using template alignment for that product eg Avery

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Andrew Lockton
Chrysalis Design, Melbourne Australia

Will try those suggestions.

Inkscape is a feature rich tool, just like Gimp. But honestly I have no clue how to use such software, I was thinking there is a basic app or basic step by step to achieve what I need, but it seems that the learning curve is too steep for me, Even for a user like me who use Solidworks to design parts.

I don't mind learning if I know the software I will be using can achieve my projected need which is a cookie cutter like outline, I'm not into art design since the artwork I use is already available on picture files, I just need an efficient workflow that gets the artwork into the desired shape, and put it in the printer software to duplicate it, and hit print.

1. You can insert a picture into a shape, or into a table cell (label). Either one should work, but editing the picture in Word is a poor choice. Graphics on labels by Graham Mayor, MVP
2. Word is a poor graphics editing program. It is, after all, a word processor.
3. Yes, it seems like a challenge learning to put it all together. I do not envy you that.