September 2004

By: Harry {doc} Babad and Ted Bade

Mail Factory 1.1 — an application to design and print address labels and envelopes on computers operated by Mac OS X.
Reviewed by Harry {doc} Babad (Whose comments are in black) and Ted Bade ( Whose comments are in blue.)

BeLight Software, Ltd.
PO Box 47
65005, Odessa
Ukraine
+380 48 738-08-49

http://www.belightsoft.com/mailfactory/
$29.95 USD http://www.belightsoft.com/buy/
Size 10.8 MB
Requirements: Mac OS X 10.2 or later. Tested on a 1 GHz dual processor PowerPC G4 Macintosh with 2 MB DDR SDRAM running under Macintosh OS X 10.3.5. [doc_Babad];
Tested on a G5/1.8GHz PowerPC with 1024 Megs of Ram, using MacOS X 10.3.5. [Ted].
For collected addresses in supported sources.
For those that don't.
Strengths: Mail Factory lets you print addresses on labels and envelopes. You can also design fancy labels and envelopes using dozens of ready-made designs, or insert custom images with your company logo or other graphics into your label. You can print on sheet labels from most sheet paper sizes. I, doc_Babad, explored the software on my DYMO label printer, using manually entered addresses only; a limitation based on the way I collect addresses.
Mail Factory has the ability to pull clip art from the Internet, program is packed with a wide variety of clip art and supports many label and envelope forms. [Ted]
Weaknesses: The address appearance issues… the gaps between Address components have been reduced, compared to version 1.0 (except the "City State Zip" string, which conforms to USPS requirements).
The software defaults to Apple's Address book, even if you don't use that program. You must load Entourage address database every time you run Mail Factory and need to access it.

Introduction

I own a Dymo LabelWriter 330 but am often disappointed with both software that shipped with the unit and its updated versions. I found, after a little experimentation, that Mail Factory 1.1 is a good improvement over Dymo software, giving me more control of the appearance and formation of the labels I create. Although, I accumulate scored of scores of addresses a year, I seldom enter complete contact information in my Eudora address book my Email client of choice. Instead I use Filemaker Pro 6.0 (FMP) to store such information, and when I have time to get relational, FMP 7.0.

Mail Factory integrates with data from Apple Address Book, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, and Eudora. It supports most popular label paper, can print to DYMO label printers, can generate US Postal Service POSTNET barcodes to expedite delivery, offers automatic address formatting for more than 50 countries, and includes dozens of built-in templates as well as more than 500 supplied clipart images. It also features an internet-based image search.

I am not as organized as Harry. I have addresses all over the place. Mainly I use Entourage, but a number of contacts came to me as vCards, which went right into my Apple Address book. Mail factory does a great job of digging out the addresses for you from these packages. If you use Apple's Address Book, the integration is superb, from the first time your run Mail Factory.

When you run Mail Factory, it opens a "Contacts" menu that contains the contacts in your Apple Address book. To insert the address of a particular contact, simply click on the address and it is inserted. The "sender" field comes from your Apple Address book entry for yourself.

One of Harry's complaints was about the address format. When you select a format for your particular country, this format includes several fields. If your entry for a particular contact doesn't have information in that field, Mail Factory leaves a blank space where the information should go. Which makes the formatting look rather odd.

I found that most of this information is stuff one might use for a more business-like situation (such as company name, and a prefix). Mail Factory allows you to create a custom address layout. I created one called "home use", which included only the information I normally keep in my database. Once a contact is on the Mail Factory window, all I need to do is tell Mail Factory to apply this custom format to the address, now the address looks the way I want it.

One complaint about Mail Factory is that the default contact application is Apple's Address book. So if I want to access my Entourage addresses, I always have to go through the process of changing to this set every time I use Mail Factory. Also, every time I switch Mail Factory to Entourage, it has to run Entourage, then load in the addresses from that database, a process that adds time to getting a label out.

According to a Belight representative, a future release of Mail Factory should allow one to select a different default address database. Also it should pull the Entourage database into itself, so it doesn't need to be pulled in every time your use it.

I found Using Mail Factory was a simple process. The program includes an assistant feature that will guide the user through the creation process. Once you create a label set, for instance an envelope or a layout for a certain type of sheet labels, you can save this format to use again later.

It's probably me, but I can never manage to get Word or even NisusWriter Express to consistently print envelopes correctly. I am sure it is that I am doing something wrong, but…

Mail Factory made the process of creating an envelope so easy that I will probably never use a word processor for this ever again! The very first time I printed an envelope using Mail Factory, it came out right. Considering I have spent hours trying to convince Word to print an envelope correctly, I have to say I love Mail Factory!! It's like a Mac, it just works.

I had a lot of fun with Mail Factory's ability to add graphics to the envelope. Not only does it come with a large database of clip art, but it also can make use of Google's clip art search engine to pull clip art off the Internet, adding a plethora of images. One scenario that came to mind as I was playing with this feature was that of a small business owner. Perhaps they want to do a mailing to customers to promote new products or promotions. More then likely, this shop sells something made by a larger company, which probably has images available.

To try this idea out, I did search for images pertaining to Boyd's Bears Inc., a manufacturer of stuffed Teddy Bears and such things. They are a smaller manufacturer, but have a pretty strong following of collectors (I live with one!!). I was pleased to see that the search provided me with a number of useful images that could be added to an envelope to spice it up. I am sure this feature could be used for many other companies that make images and clip art available on the Internet.

The Key Features of Mail Factory Include —

More than 500 supplied clipart images and built-in Internet image search.

Glitches and Issues

Mail Factory is fast, comes with ready-made designs, and is an excellent for both single or batch printing but has for me one flaw that make it impossible, in this release, to use. Since I do not store addresses in any of the supported source compilations [e.g., Apple Address Book, Microsoft Entourage, Now Contact, Eudora's address books]. To use Mail Factory, I would need to manually enter each address I wanted to print ‑ My FMP databases which now contain at least 8000 entries and even transferring 5% of them to either Eudora or Apple's address book, would negate any added convenience I would get from using this otherwise appealing software. Indeed I couldn't find any means of adding ALL of my, albeit skimpy, Eudora address book to the software's database. Selecting "Eudora" in the contact windows pulled up 21 irrelevantly named items [half entitled no name.]

I found that my use of addresses in either of my two databases was not always standard. Also, the default label format in Mail Factory is more Business oriented, with all types of information a personal letter doesn't need. It would have been nice to have a label format for personal mail. Instead, I had to go into the label format and remove those items I didn't want to see.

Unlike most products these days the folks at Belight Software Ltd did not make a complete product manual available, to capture the entire help file, each section require a separate conversion [Print to PDF] followed by using acrobat the import the pieces into a whole manual, but sadly lacking in screen shots we Macintosh users, rely on when leaning a piece of software. (Ted says "Tsk, Tsk, not even an included PDF manual)."

FLASH—I, doc_Babad, received a prompt reply from Belight's Helen Nersesova in response to my emailed concerns about the limitations my computing style imposes on my use of the software, and therefore my lower score for FMP users. She implied that although they are not presently working on extracting addresses from the proprietary Dymo address book software, they "As we are flexible vendors :), we are working to release next update soon. This version will enable the users to import text file (tab or comma delimited) with contacts. It's easy to get such type of file using the File Maker export. We plan to release the update in a few weeks." That would, when I get and use the new version, make it a powerful tool for creating address labels and envelopes and in my eyes raise its usability to me considerably—I can hardly wait.

Conclusions

According to both the publisher and our experience, Mail Factory helps you more effectively create envelopes and address labels more when:

"So if you are still writing addresses for your mailings by hand and have relatively complete contact information in your PIMs or email client address book(s) Mail Factory could be the solution for creating mail labels and printing envelopes, plain or fancy. The program allows you to manage all your mailings and requires only a minimal learning curve. You can print on most popular address label and envelope formats as well as create fully personalized labels."

We rate this product at 4.0 macCs for those who've collected addresses in the supported sources and a 2.5 for those who don't.

I, Ted, found Mail Factory fun and very easy to use. It takes creating both Envelopes and address labels to a new level of creativeness. One can add images and symbols. Who said creating an envelope couldn't be a creative process?

Because Mail Factory is so easy to use and creates great labels in a very intuitive way, I believe this small purpose specific application will easily become an important tool in my everyday use. However, for the best use of it, I need to get my addresses a bit more organized!

I concur with Harry's rating of 4.0 MacCs.