Can You Use Avery Business Cards With Pages?

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.

Good Luck.

Adam

You may use my workaround.
I print experiments on backside of already used sheets of paper.
I check that all is correcly located on the sheet.

So I print on true label sheets when all is OK.

Yvan KOENIG (from FRANCE mardi 17 mars 2009 23:19:24)

Hey Win,

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.

Adam

Hi Win,

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.

Regards,
Barry

Hey Barry,

Here is the link I got when Googling for Avery 8869. http://www.avery.com/avery/enus/Search//?dimsearch=true&N=0&Ntk=All&Ntx=mode+matchall&Nty=0&Nr=AND%28SITESCHANNELS%3AAv ery.com%29&Ntt=8869&x=3&y=18

That said, when I view 8869 in Design Pro, it shows the 8-up template as seen in Pages Business Card template that you mentioned.

And as you said, adjustments in Pages are easy enough to make it work for Win.

Good Luck, Win.

Adam

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.