Can I test a label layout on plain paper first?

Yes, and it is the best habit you can get into with labels. In Labels by Zaweba, export a PDF or print with label outlines switched on, print it on ordinary paper, then hold the page against a sheet of labels to see whether everything lands inside its label. A plain sheet costs next to nothing; a spoilt sheet of labels does not.

The outlines draw the edge of each label on the page, so the test sheet looks like a ghost of the real one. Lining it up against the labels shows at once whether the text sits in the middle or drifts towards an edge.

Why a test is worth the minute

Label sheets are made to tight measurements, and the built-in Avery UK layouts in Labels use the published template figures. The paper is not the usual problem. Printers are. Each one feeds paper slightly differently, and a millimetre or two of drift is common. On a small label, that is the difference between a neat address and one clipped at the edge.

A test print shows you that drift before it costs anything.

How to do it

Set up the job as normal: choose the stock, design the label and decide what to print, whether a group, selected contacts, rows from a CSV file or one label across a whole sheet. Check the live preview.

Then switch on label outlines and either export a PDF or print. If you go via PDF, print it at actual size, never fit to page, or the test itself will be wrong.

Take the printed page and a label sheet, put one on top of the other, and hold them up to a window or a lamp. Look at the corners first, then the middle. If every outline sits on the edge of a real label and the text is comfortably inside, you are ready.

If it doesn't line up

A small, even shift in one direction is printer drift. Use Print > Calibrate a printer. It prints a calibration page; you measure where the cross landed, and Labels works out the x/y offset that corrects it. That offset is saved for the printer and applied to everything printed on it. You can also nudge offsets by hand, up to 20 mm either way. Then print another plain-paper test to confirm.

A mismatch that grows across the sheet usually means scaling. Check that the printer's own scaling is off, and if you printed from a PDF, that the reader was at actual size. Labels itself prints at actual size from the corner of the paper, never scaled or centred.

If the whole layout is wrong, check the stock. A design set up for 21 labels per sheet won't match a sheet of 14.

When to test

Test whenever something is new: a new printer, a new kind of label sheet, a new custom stock you have entered, or a new design with items near the edges. Once a printer is calibrated and a design has printed well, you can usually go straight to the real labels next time.

Remember to switch the outlines off for the real print. They are drawn wherever the label edges are, and you don't want them on the finished labels.