Trying to get labels to fit

users
#1

Trying to produce labels, but they don't fit the paper! I'm using the
built-in L7163 address label format.

It's a bit complicated as I don't have a printer attached - I have to make a
PDF document and print it on another machine. As "Export to PDF" just gives
a sheet with the fields names on rather than the filled-in values, I use a
PDF printer and am getting different (and wrong) PDFs from both OO and LO.
Interestingly, the results are different between LO and OO, and also between
the printers I use, so there seems to be a problem with the printer
interface.

With OO using CutePDF I get a US letter size document (8 by 11 inches),
using Bullzip I get a document 20.8 by 28.2 cm (a bit smaller than A4). The
pitches are also wrong.

With LO I get the same from both printers: a correctly sized document. But
the pitch is wrong: 9.2 by 3.6 cm instead of 9.9 by 3.8.

How on earth can I get OO and/or LO to produce my labels? It's too late for
my Xmas cards now - I've gone back to an ancient Lotus SmartSuite which
works perfectly. But won't run on Windows 7 unfortunately.

#2

...

I think this will help:
<http://www.worldlabel.com/Pages/openoffice-a4.htm>
  <http://www.worldlabel.com/Templates/a4/WL-SG3899.ott>
That will provide a template (table format) for your labels. You might
consider ordering from Worldlabel... they are the only vendor that I
know of that provide OOo/AOO/LO templates for their products.

#3

Hi ptoye,

About 4 or 5 years ago when doing labels for our Christmas cards, I ran across the table style forms mentioned by NoOp below. I will never go back to the standard frame type forms standard in OO and LO. I've had absolutely no alignment problems. I'll also paste here some assistance if you are using a database to fill out the forms:

*LibreOffice Labels*
Go to insert/fields/other. In that window choose the Database Tab, then select mail merge, and drag the fields you want to your label form. Then in the same column as the mail merge selection choose next record and click insert. Copy the information from the first cell to the other cells in the template.
I don't know if this might help anyone or not. I had an OpenOffice form problem using the table template with a standard 30 label sheet (3 x 10). I have all of our Christmas card addresses in an OpenOffice database. I have the form setup, etc, to automatically pull the address information in when I click print and select the database, etc. It works great with one exception. Last year my wife said I missed having a few addresses included. I didn't think anything about it, and honestly, didn't think that was possible. This year before giving her the printed labels I thought I would check that everyone was there. I set the printing so it is sorting to print A_Z based on the last name. It takes three sheets. I have 78 names in the database, but only had 76 printed labels. What happened was when the printing went from the first sheet to the second sheet, it misses one record. The rest of the second page is fine. When I went from the second sheet to the third sheet, once again, it skipped the next label, then printed fine for the balance. When I say it skipped it, the missing record just disappears. It isn't that I end up with a blank label at the top of the sheet. The next one in line to be printed on the first label on Page 2 vanishes and the one that should be the second one on the second page becomes the first one on the second page. The same with the third page. A person would never pick this up unless checking the database against the printed labels. To solve this problem, if you need three sheets of labels, you need three sheets in your template. Also, LibreOffice and OpenOffice (at least past versions) print out one blank page between each sheet of labels. If you print the document (without importing the information, so you just have the fields) as a text file, then delete out the blank sheets, and then save the text file back to your template, that problem is solved.

Don

#4

... snip excellent advise

The good folks at WorldLabel now also include autofill PDF forms for
some (probably their most popular?) of their labels:

<http://www.worldlabel.com/Pages/autofillpdf-labels.htm#address>

#5

My experience with World Label is also excellent. They are big supporters of open source software, including Linux, LO, and OO.

They furnished me with a rather unusual label size I needed. A friend was printing labels on that size in MS word. Two thirds down the page the bottom of one label was printing on the top of the label below it. I used the table style template available from World Label and they printed perfectly in LibreOffice.

Don

#6

Thanks No-op and Don for the advice.

I wasn't 100% plain in stating the problem. All too easy when you know what
you're talking about!

Firstly, being English I need A4-size rather than 8 by 11 inch page size,
and as far as I can see World Label only do US sizes (so why do they call
themselves Word Label, then, or are the international sizes well buried on
their web site?).

Secondly, I should have mentioned that I am trying to produce labels from a
database rather than a set of identical labels. Not that this should matter
for formatting. Don's instructions give me the impression that it's more
work than should be necessary, and that LO's (and probably OO's) label
mechanism is irretrievably broken. Sad. Don - did you report the missing
records as a bug to LO's bugzilla? Probably worth while - if they don't know
it's broke they can't fix it! I'll keep a record of it for next year, but
may continue with Lotus on my ancient machine (if it's still working) or
even (boo, hiss) resort to MS Word whose label mechanism seems to work
properly.

My experience with World Label is also excellent. They are big
supporters of open source software, including Linux, LO, and OO.

They furnished me with a rather unusual label size I needed. A friend
was printing labels on that size in MS word. Two thirds down the page
the bottom of one label was printing on the top of the label below it. I
used the table style template available from World Label and they
printed perfectly in LibreOffice.

Don

#7

Hi ptoye,

I would suggest that you contact World Label (e-mail or call) and see if they can help you out. If they don't have A-4, maybe there is a similar size which will do the job for you. Here in the US we have American bolts and on imported products we have metric bolts. Many of the metric sizes are interchangeable with the American sizes as far as wrenches fitting and hole size. (Thread pitch is not the same, so nuts for the bolts are not interchangeable.)

I found the solution to the missing labels on line. Since all that was involved was to have a sheet with fields in for each page of labels (so if I needed three pages of labels printed I had a three page template) that was no big deal, so no, I did not report it. Every program has certain ways you have to do certain things. Once a few minutes are spent setting things up, they work for years perfectly after that. I've been using Base and Writer for about 7 years to do my Christmas labels, and am most pleased with the results. If I was starting from scratch today with LibreOffice, maybe the issues I had back then with OO would not exist today with LO. What I have works, and works well. I simply posted what I did just in case somebody had any issues. Yes, there were a few needless steps back when I did this years ago, but were they a big deal? No, I didn't think so. They were simple issues to resolve.

Don

#8

Note: please delimit replys other than yours so that we can tell who
wrote what.

Thanks No-op and Don for the advice.

I wasn't 100% plain in stating the problem. All too easy when you know what
you're talking about!

Firstly, being English I need A4-size rather than 8 by 11 inch page size,

That is why I pointed you to the A4 template size page. The .ott is
L7163 compatible. Note: I see that it uses frames rather than tables, so
my comment regarding tables was incorrect. Apologies.
Also see:
<http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/03/prweb357829.htm>
"A collection label templates for Writer in a4 paper format for Europe
and Asia has also been released."

The easiest way to test is to put borders on the frames & then print a
sample. Hold the sample up to a L7163 label sheet & see if they match.
This is the way I check all my templates (frame or table) before
committing to a label sheet print. Click on the outline of the first
frame, when selected right-click and select 'Frame', then Borders.
Select the outline border (all four sides) & print.

and as far as I can see World Label only do US sizes (so why do they call
themselves Word Label, then, or are the international sizes well buried on
their web site?).

They have recently had their website redone. My guess is that they've
missed the A4 label section, as they do have a product code for the
labels: WL-SG4663.
<http://www.worldlabel.com/Pages/labels.htm>
"Do not see the label size you need?

We have hundreds of sizes not listed here and if we dont have it, we can
custom manufacture labels for you. If you need samples to test, please
complete our sample request form."

That said, the shipping + label sheets might end up costing more than
buying local Avery.
...

#9

Thanks again NoOp. But I think we're at cross-purposes here. I don't need the
paper labels - they're easily and cheaply available here in England.

What I need is a way of getting LO and/or OO to print the labels correctly
on the page. I admit that having to use a PDF printer (CutePDF or Bullzip)
complicates the issue. But it seems odd to me that I get different results
between LO and OO, and between virtual printers.

I'm getting the feeling that the only way is to put OO and/or LO up on my
ancient machine and print directly. But then will I run into the missing
label problem? Wait and see?

#10

There will not be any missing labels as long as your template has as many pages as you will be printing. If you are printing 3 pages of labels, your template needs three pages with the fields in when you pull the data from the database.

Don

#11

Thanks again NoOp. But I think we're at cross-purposes here. I don't need the
paper labels - they're easily and cheaply available here in England.

That is why I mentioned "That said, the shipping + label sheets might
end up costing more than buying local Avery."

What I need is a way of getting LO and/or OO to print the labels correctly
on the page. I admit that having to use a PDF printer (CutePDF or Bullzip)
complicates the issue. But it seems odd to me that I get different results
between LO and OO, and between virtual printers.

Reset your virtual PDF printer(s) for proper A4 settings.

If on Windows I use PDFCreator: http://www.pdfforge.org/

I just tested PDFCreator, CutePDF, Acrobat Professional, LO (3.6.4.3)
export to PDF, AOO (3.4.1) export to PDF (Windows & linux for both). The
A4/L7163 PDF's are identical. I even created a PDF from MS Word 2003 to
Acrobat Professional - same results. However I did notice that printing
from the PDF resulted in all labels shifted to the left by
~1/8inch/0.125in (0.31750cm). The issue had nothing to do with LO, AOO,
Word, PDFCreator, CutePDF etc., the issue was that in Acrobat and Adobe
Reader, I needed to:

1. Set Page Scaling to 'None'
2. Turn off (untick) 'Auto Rotate and Center
2. Turn on (tick) the 'Choose paper source by PDF size

Once I did that, the printed PDF's exactly matched the print directly to
printer copies. So my initial problem was PEBCK.

As for LO: "With LO I get the same from both printers: a correctly sized
document. But the pitch is wrong: 9.2 by 3.6 cm instead of 9.9 by 3.8."

You can adjust the pitch easily in the Label|Format setup tab. The
defaults for L7163 are:
Horizontal pitch: 10.16cm
Veritical pitch: 3.81cm

I think you are referring to Width & Height:
Width: 9.91cm
Height: 3.81cm
Left margin: 0.47cm
Top margin: 1.52cm
Columns: 2
Rows: 7
Page Width: 21.00cm
Page Height: 29.70cm

From Help:

#12

NoOp wrote

What I need is a way of getting LO and/or OO to print the labels
correctly
on the page. I admit that having to use a PDF printer (CutePDF or
Bullzip)
complicates the issue. But it seems odd to me that I get different
results
between LO and OO, and between virtual printers.

Reset your virtual PDF printer(s) for proper A4 settings.

If on Windows I use PDFCreator: http://www.pdfforge.org/

You can adjust the pitch easily in the Label|Format setup tab. The
defaults for L7163 are:
Horizontal pitch: 10.16cm
Veritical pitch: 3.81cm

I think you are referring to Width & Height:

I don't know PDFCreator - I'll have a look at it. Thanks for the idea.

Sorry - I should have said 10.2 not 9.9 - was looking at the wrong bit of
the format. But I do mean "Pitch" not "Width".

The virtual drivers (both of them) seem to be set to A4 as default, Why
CutePDF ignores this I don't know.