Basics4Mac - Print Labels, Envelopes and More from Address Book

Unlock the secret printing features

Mailing Labels Template
Click to see a larger image

NOTE: I ran this tip about six weeks ago, but am re-running it now at the suggestion of a reader who thought that people would like this information as they get their Christmas card lists together. If you have the people on your Christmas card list in Address Book, you can easily print address labels or envelopes.

Tucked away in the Print Dialog of Address Book are four handy printing templates: Labels, Envelopes, Lists and a Pocket Address Book.

To get to these templates:

Select the contacts you want to print. ( Selection tips) If you use address groups, you can select the group name. (How to make a "Christmas Card" group)
Go to File / Print... in the menu bar.

If your Print Dialog box doesn't look like the one in the image above, you need to expand it. Click on the button with the downward-facing triangle next to the printer name.

Choose the template you wish to use from the Style dropdown.

For the most part, the options are pretty self explanatory, but here are a few notes to help you out:

For labels, use the Avery number that comes on every box of labels. Even if you don't buy Avery brand labels, most store brands will still include the Avery number. Setting the Avery number will ensure that the measurements are right for the labels.
For envelopes, there are more size choices than I ever knew existed for envelopes. For North American envelopes, Official 10 is what I consider a number 10 business envelope.
Printing envelopes is always half luck and half trial and error. Every printer feeds envelopes differently. Look in your printer manual or look for icons on the printer itself to see how it wants the envelopes fed. Plan to mess up a few practice envelopes before you get it right.
With the address List, you can choose whatever fields you want to print.
The Pocket Address Book is an odd duck. It will print a tiny sized address book on one page with cut marks. Cut out each page and staple them together and you will have a tabbed address book. It sounds like a good idea, but once you cut out the pages you see that they don't fit together right.