How to Change Default Label Paper Size?

MichaelCrawford

I'm trying to print address labels from a database. The latest 3.0 Beta for Intel Mac OS X is coming closer to success than I was getting before, but it has the wrong paper size.

I'm using US Letter, but the paper size OOo sets up is 8.55" by 10.52". It screws up the alignment of my text on the label sheets.

I did try resetting the paper size, but it causes OOo to lay out my labels in a single column instead of two.

I did try saving a new default template, but it doesn't seem to work for the label paper size.
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JohnV · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 6:24 am Post subject:

I don't have v3 but with v2.x if you use File > New > Labels after you click New Document you have a normal Writer document containing lots of frames. You can then change the paper size, save the document and use it many times.

MichaelCrawford · Posted: Wed Jun 25, 2008 9:19 pm Post subject:

Simply resetting the paper size to Letter caused what should have been two columns of labels to be erroneously changed to a single column.

But the original, incorrect paper width was 8.55 inches. US Letter paper is just 8.5 inches.

I realized that there must have been incorrect measurements in the label layout that caused the calculated width to exceed the paper size; making the paper narrower caused OOo to think that the right-hand column of labels with either unusable or no longer present.

Reducing the horizontal pitch fixed the problem.

This was with the Avery 8253 labels. They are 2 by 4 inch labels, with two columns of five on a sheet.

Also OOo was printing the top line of the address right up against the top of the label. Small errors in paper feeding could cause some of the text to be cut off. I fixed this by adding a little to the top margin in the label layout dialog.

I made a lot of test prints on plain paper until it was looking right. I was very nervous when I loaded up my printer with the real address labels, as I had a lot to print and the labels are quite expensive.

But I'm happy to report that they all printed successfully. Thanks for your help!

This was with 3.0.0beta_20080429 for Intel Mac OS X. The release version, and the beta for PowerPC didn't work at all. So something must have gotten fixed very recently
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nwagner419 · Newbie Joined: 12 Jul 2008 Posts: 1

I'm having similar problems with Avery labels 8160 and 8167. These were label documents that worked under earlier versions of openoffice (I think 2.0 or 2.2). How did you reduce your horizontal pitch?