I am trying to print mailing labels for all members of a group in Address Book using a Brother QL-500 Label printer. The label stock is Brother DK-11201 standard address labels.
How do I set it up?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
Have you tried using the info at Address Book Help (Help men), Organize Contacts, Print Contact information?
Yes, but it seems to apply printing to normal sheet printers, which print the various Avery type label stock, and not label printers, which use a roll of labels about 29 mm. wide, and are essentially designed to produce single mailing labels on an ad hoc basis.
I see. Well, it sounds like Brother needs to provide this info; presumably their printer drivers are setup to do this.
Brother do indeed have a User's Guide for the Mac. It was released on 24/2/2005 and is in a Stuffit Archive. My iMac tells me I cannot open the application Stuffit Expander because Power PC applications are no longer supported.
Brother is a company which seems to have difficulty recognising the existence of operating systems other than Windows.
Did you check out that link I posted?
Yes. Drilling down through that site is where I got my info. Unfortunately, it is not helpful, which is why I resorted to Apple Discussions.
There's probably a way; in the past I managed to get one working by using custom settings. But I cannot seem to find a way to change the orientation so it never works; I've been able to do it in other applications but not Address Book. And it has no Page Setup.
But there's actually an easier way: just download P-touch Editor from Brother. It's updated to run on Lion, and although a bit slow in my experience it will print fine. You can select Address Book as source and use it to fill fields, or just copy and paste into a label. Setting it up to use fields is probably the best solution for printing for group mailing lists.
If you do a lot of this and want even more features, take a look at SOHO Labels by www.chronosnet.com. It will print to just about any printer, including the QLs. And it works with Aperture, iPhoto etc. so that you can make some very nice custom labels, even with a black and white label printer. And if you decide to use sheet labels, it lets you do one-offs easily.
Rob
Rob,
I have tried this, and to an impractical extent it works. Defining the correct size of the fields is a nightmare, and the typescript that appears is a crazy mish-mash of underlined, bold, outline and italic scripts. It also does not seem to automatically work through the database of 50 odd entries, but you have to click on each one.
The way I did it before, by simply copying a Mailing Label from Address Book, and pasting it in a pre-defined P-Touch label, is a more practical, but very slow solution, as one simply goes address by address.
Clearly, Apple software spoils us all - I did not realise there was still such appalling software marketed.
I have had some success with doing exactly this, although I'm still struggling with one final aspect.
What you need to do is set the Contacts app to print Envelopes, rather than labels. If you do this, you'll find that there is an 'Orientation' tab which you can set to Landscape orientation.
Basic steps are:
- From contacts app, enter 'Print' dialog.
- Change 'Style' to 'Envelopes'
- In 'Layout' tab, define a new custom layout, then enter appropriate sizes (e.g. width: 80mm, height: 62mm, recipient: Top:10, Left:10, Width:60, Height;42, Sender: 0 for all values)
- In 'Label' tab, uncheck 'Print my address'
- In 'Orientation' tab, choose 'Landscape'
- Change the drop-down from 'Contacts' to 'Basic' settings
- Change the length to something suitable, e.g. 95mm
- In the 'Presets' drop-down, save the whole lot as a preset so you can use them next time.
The only problem I've found is that the 'Length' property seems to revert each time back to 291mm which means you get a lot of spare label spooling out the machine if you forget to adjust it manually each time. This is a pain and I'd welcome any solutions. So close to this being a perfect solution!
Hope this helps
Carl
Did you come up with a solution for your address label printing problem? I have the same problem. The Brother P-Touch software is a horrible solution for Mac. I can search for an address and write it out by hand by the time I could have one printed using Brother's solution. I'm in the market for a label printer than *just works* with Mac.
Ii'm just printing labels for Christmas cards today, and it is a matter of copying the address from my Address Book, and pasting it on a pre-defined address label. It is low, but I have not come up with a better way. Brother still don't know about Any alternative to Windows!
Thanks for the update. Does anybody know how the Dymo software works with Mac Address Book integration?
I'm using the Brother QL-700 Label Printer. I've found that using Ambrosia's EasyEnvelopes app works best. The current version (1.0.2) does not offer native support for label printing, just full envelopes. But it's works perfectly by manually adjusting the page size and print area. It even supports Return Address Label printing by selecting "Return on Back" on the Envelope Settings.
I ended up going with a Dymo TwinTurbo 450 (with stamp printing, because why not?) and it works as expected. No issues...other than having to reboot it every other day for the Mac to recognize it being present. Still working with Dymo on that but their customer support seems easy to get in touch with and very thorough with their assistance.
The Dymo Label Software is compatible with Mac and it includes the feature of using the Mac Address Book as the predetermined Address Book when creating your labels. Thus, it will work fine on your Mac. We are always happy to help and advice with any questions or doubts you may have, so please do not hesitate to ask us here ot contact us. ^CP
Address Book label printing
