Printing label sheets and name badges in Publish by Zaweba

Name badges for a club evening, address labels for a mailing, or a sheet of place cards for a dinner all share one awkward property. Several items sit on one sheet, and each should show a different person. Publish by Zaweba handles this by combining mail merge with a label number on each field.

The idea is simple once you see it. A field carries a label number, and that number tells Publish which record to show on that label. The first label on the sheet shows the first record, the second label the next one, and so on. With 8 badges on a sheet, the sheet shows 8 different records, and the next sheet carries on from there.

Starting from the right template

Two templates make the most of this. The name badges template comes with 9 sample people already in it, so you can see how the badges fill before you connect your own list. The envelope template has an address block with 3 sample addresses, a ready-made starting point for addressing a stack of envelopes. Opening one of these and looking at how its fields are set up is the quickest way to understand the method.

From either template, connect your own data through Tools > Mail merge. Choose a CSV with a header row of column names, such as First name, Last name, Organisation or Address, and the sample people are replaced by yours.

Setting up your own sheet

If you're designing a sheet from scratch, lay out the first label exactly as you want it, with the fields in place. Then copy it across the sheet in a grid, using the guides and snapping to keep the spacing even, and give the fields on each copy the next label number. Preview record by record to check that each label shows a different person and that nobody is skipped or doubled.

Measure your actual label stationery before you start. Commercial label sheets and badge inserts come in many sizes, and the layout on screen has to match them closely. Set the page size to the sheet, place guides at the edges of each label, and keep the text well inside them so a small misfeed in the printer doesn't cut anything off.

Printing and testing

Export one merged PDF to see every sheet before you commit expensive label stock, or print merged straight to your printer. Publish prints at actual size, centred, and only scales down when the paper is smaller than the page, so a sheet set to the right size comes out at the right size.

Always print a test page on plain paper first. Hold it against a sheet of labels up to the light and check that the text sits inside each label. If it's slightly off, nudge the layout, not the printer settings, and test again. Once it lines up, load the real labels.

Getting the details right

Name badges are read from a distance, so make the first name large and the rest smaller, and choose a clear font. Check the longest name in the list against the badge width. For addresses, keep each line in its own field or column if you can, so you can control line breaks rather than relying on long text to wrap neatly.

Watch the end of the list. If your records don't divide evenly by the number of labels on a sheet, the last sheet will be partly empty, which is fine for badges and useful to know before you print a whole pack of labels.

How label sheets build on mail merge

Label sheets build directly on mail merge, so anything you know about preparing a CSV applies here too. The difference is that instead of one record per page, you get many records per sheet, which suits small printed items. Clubs, schools and churches organising events will get the most from it, and Publish by Zaweba keeps the data inside the publication so next year's badges start from this year's file.