About a month ago, I wrote about how you can create and save a Word file for envelopes you use repeatedly. A couple of readers wrote in that another fast way to save recurring address information is to use labels. Basically you just create a sheet of address labels with all your addresses in them, print them out, and peel them off.
This is a great technique if you pay a number of bills where the company you’re paying doesn’t provide a preprinted envelope. I’ve written before about how you can do labels using a mail merge, but never about how you create a plain old document filled with labels.
The main thing to realize is that a sheet of "labels" is really just a Word table that has had its margins, rows, and columns set so that the text lines up correctly on a sheet of peel-and-stick labels. The dialog box includes the standard Avery and other name-brand product numbers, but you don’t have to buy any particular brand of labels. (Yes, you can buy the cheap office supply store brand and it won’t make any difference!) You just need to know the measurements of the label you have.
To create a page of labels in Word 2003, you choose Tools|Letters and Mailings|Envelopes and Labels. (In Word 2000, the command is just Tools|Envelopes and Labels.) Now click the Label tab and click the Options button to set the label type. You can change the Label product drop-down to your label brand and find the number. Or you can find an equivalent in the list. Just click a product number on the left and you’ll see what size the individual labels are. Many generic brands of labels also say somewhere on the box that they are "equivalent" to a particular Avery number.
When you’re done setting options, click OK. Back in the Envelopes and Labels dialog box, make sure the Print radio button is set to Full page of the same label. Now click the New Document button and all the labels appear on the page. As I said, it’s just a Word table, so you can type your own text and save the file like you would any other document.