I've always just printed out my business cards on heavy paper and then hand cut them out with a utility knife and straight edge. This worked fine when I was only using a few cards a week but it's just gotten too time consuming so I recently purchased some Avery Clean Edge Business Cards 8869. In Windows when you create a card there is a built in Avery template program to select but I can find nothing similar in Pages. How do you use Avery Business Card Stock in Pages? I tired building a card in Avery's Design Pro software but the directions are terrible and I just don't have the time to invest in learning yet another computer program.
Thanks,
Win
Mac Mini,
Mac OS X (10.4.11),
1.25 GHz Power PC 512MB RAM Mini Stack VE 160 GB Firewire
Sure you can. There is a template just for those in Pages. It is called 8-up.
Design one card in the upper left box, select all of its elements and Group them. Now just select, copy and paste until you got all eight spots filled.
Sure you can. There is a template just for those in Pages. It is called 8-up.
Design one card in the upper left box, select all of its elements and Group them. Now just select, copy and paste until you got all eight spots filled.
Thanks for your advice. I've used the Pages template for business cards printed out on plain paper and then cut out with a knife with good results. My worry is that it won't work on Avery Card stock because of the spacing of the cards on the 8.5x11" template. In Windows you can just click on the Avery Template # but for some reason known only to Apple they did not include this option with Pages. Have you ever actually used Avery business card stock with pages? Or will I just have to try it out and waste some stock finding out whether it works or not?
I've tried that myself and it works, but only if you know how to shift things around if it doesn't fit correctly. With Avery Design software there is an adjust function that lets you do this but I don't think such a thing exists in Pages. I guess you would have to change the top, bottom, and side margins if the cards don't print correctly on the Avery Stock?
The 8-up template seems to have the same dimensions as the Avery8869 stock. You might try designing and printing onto regular paper and place over the card stock to see if it lines up. Or just make sure you don't use any border lines in the design.
If you would like to send your design to me, I would be happy to try for you and then send back the final product.
I couldn't find the Avery 8869 stock mentioned by Adam.
Avery lists only one 8 card stock, 38373: perforated edges on glossy photo quality paper.
All their other current BC stock is 10 up, as is the BC stock of all the other manufacturers that I've seen in places like Staples, Office Depot, etc.
Pages '08 offers 15 premade templates for business cards, all of which appear to be based on the 10 card sheets.
Dimensions of these sheets are quite consistent: 1/2 inch margins top and bottom, 3/4 inch margins left and right, 10 cards 3 1/2" x 2". Those are the same dimensions as Avery's 10 up BC stock uses.
(If you are actually using 8 up stock, the templates can be easily switched: Click the Pages button at the left of the Button bar and choose 8 up.)
Easy and economical way to check fit:
• Open one of the Business card templates.
• Click the Shapes button and add a Square shape.
• Drag the corners of the shape to resize and shape it to cover everything on the page except the index marks at the edges that show where to cut the cards apart.
• Click the (pen) Colour box at the left of the Tool bar and change the colour to either white or non (first cell in the colour table).
• Open the Inspector, choose Graphic (first to the right of the T), click the Fill Colour patch and choose White.
• Print (onto paper or onto the BC stock).
This prints only the index marks, leaving the rest of the page 'white'. The index marks should line up with the edges of the individual cards on the card stock.
If they far enough off to matter, do this:
• Return to the page. Scroll to the top so that you can see the top left corner.
• Click on the page, then go Edit > Select All.
• Use the arrow keys to shift the contents of the page in the direction(s) it needs to move. You'll see the index lines for the top left card move away from the blue layout lines as you do this. When you think they're in the right place, print another test
• Repeat as necessary.
Don't try to get the alignment perfect. People are going to be looking at only one card at a time. Leave enough white space around the edges of the cards that the printed material doesn't cross onto the adjacent card.
Thanks everyone for all the suggestions. Soon as I can work up the courage I'll give it a try. I say this because when I attempted to print out the business cards I created in Avery's Design Pro it was a literal nightmare!!!!
As folks have suggested here, after designing the cards I first printed them out on regular inkjet paper and overlay the finished cards over the business card stock. Everything lined up perfectly so I then printed out the cards. The first run turned out pretty good. On the second sheet there was a constant shift downwards as every pair of cards was printed until the bottom four cards print literally went over the perf lines.
Called Avery and the person I spoke to was of little help to put it politely. After trying her suggestions I called back and got a different person who was equally unhelpful. So I called HP the manufacturer of my printer and reached someone in, you guessed it, India, for whom English is a 14th language, if you get my drift. Tried his suggestion, didn't work. So I called three more times.
My feeling was that the problem had to do with uneven feed of the business card stock through the printer. Given that there is no Business Card Stock option in my HP printer under paper type it was unclear which paper type to select. The first little Indian told me to use Greeting Card Stock, the second little Indian told me to use Photo Glossy, and the third little Indian told me to use Photo Matt.
None of these suggestions worked. So I tried cleaning the feed rollers and a bunch of other things. Still no luck.
Always the optimist I've let the printer sit idle for 3 weeks in hopes that it will repair itself and then I'll try again.
In the interim I needed to design a different business card and I had so much trouble figuring out how to use Avery's Design Pro that I decided to use Pages instead.
Again, many thanks for your suggestions, and just as soon as I'm brave enough I give her another try!
There is a mismatch between what you need for card stock and what printers can accommodate, especially those that do not have a straight feed and must bend them around the roller.
Business cards are typically 250gsm to 350gsm card stock. What that translates to in the haphazard US system heaven knows, enough to say that it is pretty thick and stiff and does not bend well. Less than that and it just feels flimsy and cheap.
There is no way the card will travel consistently through the printer rollers when the rollers are usually set for much thinner stock.
The Do-It-Yourself kits are for designed for those who live in the expectation that all you have to do is wish hard enough and it might just work.
The need for them is really gone, now that there are digital presses that will print reasonable quantities to a fairly high standard for about the same price.
