Can I add a 4th line in Address Book labels?

Question

Level 2

186 points

Can I add a 4th line in Address Book labels?

I'm delighted to discover the excellent label printing feature in Address Book.

But I'm amazed that it only seems to be able to include 3 lines in the label printout...

Name,
Address,
City + State + Zip

Is there any way to include a 4th line in the label?
It seems such a sophisticated program that can add graphics and shrink the font size to fit the label size ought to include such a feature?

I see even Leopard does not include a 4 line feature.

Also, does anyone know the difference between the 3.1 vcard and the 2.0 vcard?

Thanks for any enlightenment...

:0)

Dual MMD G4 1.25, Mac OS X (10.3.x), Wacom Intuos, Umax Powerlook III, Epson 2200 etc, etc, etc...

Posted on Nov 9, 2007 12:01 PM

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Answer 1

trudeg

Level 1

4 points

Nov 21, 2007 4:18 AM in response to John Nez

The way that we have done it now is adding the persons name as the first line of the actual address. It's not pretty I know, and if you have a lot of addresses it a lot of work, but it does deliver the required result! jey! I did nearly a hundred in a half hour, and they print beautifully!
Hope this helps,
Trude

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Answer 2

bneely

Level 5

5,255 points

Nov 9, 2007 4:46 PM in response to John Nez

Leopard can also print the company name field on a mailing label, so it would look like

Name
Company
Street
City State Zip

vCard is a standardized file format. The versions are actually 2.1 and 3.0. Address Book supports importing and exporting of both formats to offer better compatibility with other applications and devices such as wireless phones that also deal with vCards. In Address Book, the vCard 3.0 version has a little bit more information, so you should use that for the export format when possible.

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Answer 3

John Nez Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 10, 2007 6:58 AM in response to bneely

Well I've spent HOURS searching every feature of the label / list Address Book setup and I have not found out where there is an option for printing a 4th line... or even controlling the layout of the address label.

The best I've come up with is to try and fool the program by sneaking the fourth line (job title) into the address box. But I'd have to do that individually for each of the 550 cards!

Does anybody know where the address label layout might be edited? To add in a 4th or even a 5th line?

I'd say Address Book would be ideal if it had such a feature... I just wished I could find it!

Thanks....

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Answer 4

bneely

Level 5

5,255 points

Nov 10, 2007 9:50 AM in response to John Nez

Alas, the label format isn't editable. If this functionality is really what you need, try searching for a third-party printing application that reads the Address Book data. You can search for such applications at http://www.versiontracker.com/ .

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Answer 5

Nov 10, 2007 11:36 AM in response to John Nez

What exactly are you trying to add? I just edited one of my contacts addresses to have 4 lines, then went to print and it had a total of 5 lines, including the Name of my contact.

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Answer 6

trudeg

Level 1

4 points

Nov 15, 2007 7:31 AM in response to John Nez

I'm also looking for a solution to this problem.
Please let this be possible somehow, otherwise the address book becomes a bit useless....
Thanks

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Answer 7

John Nez Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 15, 2007 7:49 AM in response to trudeg

Happy to report that a 3rd party Address Book tie-in software called iDress addresses this glaring fault with the original Apple software!

http://www.incarna.com/idress/index.html

I can only think that Apple agreed with Microsoft to NOT include a full label formatting feature, so that people would have to buy the Microsoft product. I also note that Pages does NOT include any labeling software that I can find... (only looked around for 15 minutes though).

I guess iWork figures people never need database address labels at work!

I only wish that the Apple software was the equal of the Apple OS and hardware!

Oh well, maybe someday...

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Answer 8

igrok-mac

Level 3

947 points

Nov 15, 2007 8:28 AM in response to John Nez

I just tried it with a contact that has 5 lines, and it worked just fine. Not sure what to say....

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Answer 9

Nov 15, 2007 8:55 AM in response to igrok-mac

Stone Designs Create now supports Address Book fields and can handle printing sheets of labels. It also works well with Dymo Label printers, you can have a free demo licence, is written in Cocoa, for both PPC and Intel and has fantastic customer support.

http://www.stone.com/Create/Create.html

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Answer 10

John Nez Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 15, 2007 9:10 AM in response to igrok-mac

"I just tried it with a contact that has 5 lines, and it worked just fine. Not sure what to say...."

I'd be curious which fields were published to the label?

Did the 'company' field print?
Did the 'Position' field print?

I've tried for hours and can only get the name and address to print... or only the company and address. Unless I add the company & title to the address field, which isn't really practical for a list of 500 names.

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Answer 11

Nov 15, 2007 9:49 AM in response to John Nez

I was very disappointed with Address Book support for printing so being a long time Create user I contacted the developer and he responded with Address Book support. This is so hot of the press I need to add a special link to download it.

ftp://ftp.swcp.com/pub/tmp/a/Create-2007-11-14.dmg

It will be the live version in a few weeks.

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Answer 12

igrok-mac

Level 3

947 points

Nov 15, 2007 12:58 PM in response to John Nez

I actually got 7 lines when I checked the boxes to include company and country.

Name
Company
address line 1
address line 2
city
postal code
country

I didn't have a "position" but I did have a "job title" and that did not get included. I'll see if there's any way to have that included, but my guess is that there's a plist file you can edit to get that on there. Just have to find it.

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Answer 13

John Nez Author

Level 2

186 points

Nov 18, 2007 11:32 AM in response to igrok-mac

I'm guessing that's on the 'Lists' printout, and not on the labels.

I see that Leopard allows one to add a 'Company' listing.

I still think it's short-sighted of Apple to not allow an easily formatted label. I notice most all the 3rd party vendors like iDress are out of business now too!

Apple is overlooking a huge software opportunity in not evolving Mail and Address Book into bona-fide word processing software.

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Answer 14

Dec 4, 2007 9:55 AM in response to trudeg

Hi, I am new to apple discussions but have owned macs for over 15 years now. I am desperately trying to print holiday labels for my business and I cannot figure out how to included a company name field in the label using address book. I am still working on tiger right now. Does anyone have any advice on how to get this done? I tried downloading idress but it's no longer available. Please, any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

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Answer 15

John Nez Author

Level 2

186 points

Dec 4, 2007 10:17 AM in response to Marietta Hurwitz

I can SO relate to your feeling of being the last person on planet earth running OSX who needs to add in a 4th address line (or even a fifth line! Heavens to Betsy!)

I too searched for weeks to find a 3rd party add on to fulfill this basic everyday need that Apple has overlooked. I too was heartbroken to discover that iDress is no longer available anywhere!

But don't despair... Santa will still get those cards out on time! I discovered Pearlabelizer at:

http://www.pearworks.com/pages/pearLabelizer_new.html

It works very well once you figure out how to customize the label settings. You need to pick the avery sheet number from the folder that comes along with the software, (when it asks you to pick a label layout, navigate to that folder)

Then when you have it set to 'address book printing', you go to the Preferences and under Address Book you can set the type size, add as many more fields as you like, and generally print labels exactly as Apple should have allowed in the first place.

Best of luck! It's a little bit odd at first, but it all can be done easily, once you figure it out.
Use the 'print preview' after you hit 'print' since the screen is not a WYSIWYG application.

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