My wife only uses Excel to print labels on her Mac. She spends $130/yr to do this!
Looking for a better way.
Can the spreadsheet / Libre use Avery label stock and work for her?
thanks!
menu:File>New>Labels… starts a label wizard where you can select a brand and a label sheet. The labels are created in Writer. The data source of the labels may be a spreadsheet, text file, dBase or other kind of database.
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Chapter 14 of the Writer Guide is called Mail Merge. It goes into detail on how you can set up your data source, using built-in labels and creating custom labels. Download from English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides
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OK, I have yet to download Libre; waiting on the possibility . . . and it sounds like there IS a solution here.
How about a followup round?!
Apparently I can print directly from Avery’s website, not sure how to impart the data into it and whether it is harder or not than just using Libre. Would you have any insight into also using Avery’s solution and able to compare?
Finally, it appears this is the process, do I have it pretty much correct?
– copy from Excel spreadsheet a range of cell data into “Writer”
– Find an avery label template in Writer and format Writer manually to print from the web onto local printer
Do I have it correct? thx.
It appears I will need to do the following, correct?
– download libre office; read a chapter or two(14 at least) to understand the logistics of using Libre and Writer and the label wizard.
– Find the particular Avery label template in Writer, select, and
– dump the data(copy / paste?) from Excel spreadsheet into writer and print
No. Register the excel spreadsheet as a database which is a quite simple process and is described at the beginning of the mail merge chapter.
Then click File - New - Labels and choose the brand and the type. Note that there are 3 different Avery “brands” to choose from, Avery Letter Size which uses letter size paper available in USA, Avery A4 which uses A4 paper, and Avery A4/ Asia which uses A4 paper but are available in Asia and Oceania.
Make sure to tick the box Synchronise labels which is on another tab of the same dialogue. This allows you to set out the layout of just the first label and then apply that to all the other labels.
I prefer not to add the database fields from the dialogue but to add them to the labels from the View > Data Sources pane. Just drag the field name to add the field to the label at the cursor. Add spaces and returns as needed.
When happy, click Synchronise Labels to make all the labels the same.
Note: You can right click at the paragraph mark and select Edit Section > Options > Indents to add indents to the text so it doesn’t start or finish right at the edge, in the image above I set the before indent to 0.5 cm (3/16")
[Edit]
Note 2: You can install LibreOffice alongside Microsoft Office. Make sure you select the right download depending on whether the Mac is Intel chip or M chip (Silicon). It should take over file association for .odt, .ods, .odg, and other Open Document Formats but leave MS with its formats.
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Thanks for all the detail here. I appreciate your time!
The most important prerequisite is your spreadsheet having a simple and consistent table layout.
- One row of column labels (“first_name”, “last_name” etc. in @EarnestAl’s screenshot). The actual labels do not matter as long as they are unique.
- first names below “first_name”, last names below “last_name”, …
A spreadsheet allows all kinds of layout. Something like the following will fail:
first_name James
last_name Butt
company_name …
address …
That would be a data layout to be copied manually into labels which would be cumbersome.
IMHO, the creation of a data source is not well documented in the mail merge chapter.
- menu:File>New>Database… starts the database wizard
- Connect to existing database of type “Spreadsheet”.
- Point to your spreadsheet and check option “Register database”
- Save the database document.
You may close the database window and forget about it, but do not (re-)move it!
Now start File>New>Labels and create a blank pattern of tiled labels according to the specified brand and label type. Then proceed as @EarnestAl suggested. It is the best (and easiest) way to fill blank labels with content.
After the address list on your spreadsheet changed (new records, modified records, deleted records), you have to save the spreadsheet and restart the entire office suite before the changes take place in your labels.
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thanks again Villeroy!