How to print labels for only some of your contacts

There are two ways to print labels for only some of your contacts in Labels by Zaweba. For a one-off, select the people in the address book and choose the selected contacts in Print and merge. For a list you will use again, put them in a group and print that group. Either way, only those people get a label.

Which one to use depends on whether the choice is a passing one or a list with a name.

Selecting contacts for a one-off

On the address book tab, select the contacts you want. You can select several at once in the list. Use the search box to narrow things down first: it looks across every field and group name, and when you type several words they must all match. Typing a town, for example, shows only contacts there, and you can select from that shorter list.

Then go to Print and merge and choose the selected contacts. The live preview shows one label for each, laid out on the sheet.

This suits jobs like sending samples to four customers or invitations to the neighbours on one street.

Using a group for lists you keep

When the same set of people comes up again, make a group. Groups are tags such as Christmas cards, Club members or Customers, and a contact can be in as many as you like. Create the group, select the contacts and add them to it.

In Print and merge, choose the group. Next year, or next month, the list is ready. Add new people as you meet them, remove any who drop off, and the group stays current. Deleting a group never deletes its contacts.

Groups also make CSV export easier. Filter to a group and export just those contacts if someone else needs the list.

Checking the selection before you print

Look through the live preview. Every sheet is shown as it will print, so you can count the labels and make sure the right names are there. Set the start position if you are using a part-used sheet; labels before it are greyed out.

If someone is missing, go back and add them to the selection or the group. If someone shouldn't be there, take them out. It is quicker than picking a stray label off a sheet.

Other ways to choose

Print and merge has two more sources worth knowing. Everyone prints a label for every contact in the book. Rows from a CSV file let you print from a spreadsheet without importing it, with every column available as a field by its header. That is useful when someone hands you a guest list that you don't want to keep in your own address book.

You can also set copies of each label, if each chosen person needs more than one.

A tip for big address books

The contact list reloads in full on each keystroke in the search box. That is fine for ordinary address books but slower with tens of thousands of entries. If your book is very large, groups are the faster way to pick the same people repeatedly.