Printing Labels, Envelopes and Postcards

With Mail Factory, you can print on most popular label stock from the leading manufacturers, as well as on any other paper. The program also supports nearly all existing envelope sizes, including envelopes with windows. You can easily create and save custom layouts.

Below we will go through ordinary printing procedure, which is used for printing single envelope/label or for printing several identical labels (e.g. with sender's address) or envelopes (e.g. envelopes with recipient address windows). If you require automatic printing of different recipient addresses, Merge Printing procedure should be used.

Note: Printing postcards is similar to printing envelopes when your postcard paper has only one postcard per sheet. If there are several postcards on a sheet, the Print dialog looks like for labels.

Printing labels

1. Click the Print button on the toolbar, or choose Print from the File menu.
2. The print dialog will come up. In the dialog you can see a preview of the labels as they will be positioned on the printed sheet. The page size (Letter, A4, etc.) is set automatically according to the label paper template you're using.

   

   • Select the printer you would like to use in the Printer list at the top of the dialog.
   • Enter the number of labels you would like printed in the appropriate field of the dialog.
   • Enter the position where you would like the first label to be printed in Start from label field.
   • If you need the cut marks or label outlines to be printed, tick the Cut lines and Dotted marks boxes respectively. This may be helpful if you're printing on regular paper, rather than special label paper, and want to cut the labels afterwards.
   • Print as Raster Image - send the document to the printer as a raster image, rather than vector. Enable this option if you have problem printing your labels or envelopes - it makes printing slower, but more accurate. Default value can be set in Preferences Dialog.
   • Rules options are commonly used in Merge Printing to manage address appearance on the label. But they also work for ordinary printing (e.g. to switch off Country field).
3. Click the Next button. System dialog with selected Copies&Pages option will come up for setting printer options (such as print quality, etc).
4. Finally, choose the Print button.

When you print out your labels, they may not line up correctly on the label stock - then you will need to calibrate your printer. For more information, see "Printer Calibration".

Printing envelopes

Printing envelopes has it's own specifics. That mostly concerns envelope orientation and feeding, which may differ from printer to printer.

Some printers can't print close to the paper sheet or envelope edges and that often cuts the return address. To resolve this problem, you can either move the address block further from the edges, or use the rotate buttons in the Print dialog - the mailing address and barcode are normally not too close to the edges, so if the envelope is rotated it may solve the problem.

Almost all printers have built-in support for most popular envelope sizes. Some even have special envelope trays for feeding envelopes. Mail Factory allows you to choose between automatic and manual modes of printing envelopes. By default, it works in the manual mode - that is, you can control how to feed and position the envelope. If your printer has an envelope tray and you want to feed envelopes from it, using the automated settings - enable "Load from envelope tray" option in the Print dialog.

To print envelopes:

1. Click the Print button on the toolbar, or choose Print from the File menu.
2. The print dialog will come up. In the dialog you can see a preview of the envelope and its position relative to a printed page (at the right, centered, or at the left).

   

   • Select the printer you would like to use in the Printer list at the top of the dialog.
   • Enter the number of envelopes you would like printed in the appropriate field of the dialog.
   • You may change the position (how you insert the envelope into the printer) by using the Paper Feed buttons. For laser printers, the most common position is centered. For inkjet printers, the right position is the most common.
   • Use "Load from envelope tray" option, if you use a special tray and the printer supports your envelope size.
   • Print as Raster Image - send the document to the printer as a raster, rather than vector image. Enable this option if you have problem printing your labels or envelopes - it makes printing slower, but more accurate. Default value can be set in Preferences Dialog.
   • Rules options are generally needed in Merge Printing to manage address appearance on the envelope. But they also work for ordinary printing (e.g. to switch off Country field).
3. Click the Next button. System dialog with selected Copies&Pages option will come up for setting printer options (such as print quality, etc).
4. Finally, choose the Print button.

When feeding an envelope, pay attention to the orientation of the flap, so that the address is not printed upside down. The top edge of the envelope that you see in preview window is the envelope edge that has to be inserted into your printer's tray.