About & how it works

What it is

Label Studio turns a spreadsheet into a print-ready sheet of labels. You supply rows; it lays them out on a real label format and hands back a PDF. There is no account, no limit, and no cost.

It exists because the standard answer to "how do I print labels from a spreadsheet" is a Word mail merge, and that answer assumes desktop Office, assumes Windows-shaped menus, and breaks in a dozen small ways. The underlying task does not need any of that.

Everything runs in your browser

This is a static site. There is no backend, no database, and no API. The page loads once and from then on your spreadsheet is read by JavaScript in your own tab, the PDF is assembled in that tab, and the download comes from your machine's memory.

There is no upload step because there is nowhere to upload to. That is a structural fact about how the site is built, not a policy that could quietly change.

Label geometry is data, not code

Each supported sheet is described as a set of measurements: page size, label size, how many across and down, the outer margins, and the gaps between cells. One function turns that into positions on the page. Adding a format means adding measurements, never changing layout logic — if a new format needed different maths, that would mean the maths was wrong.

Every Avery geometry here is taken from published template specifications rather than inferred from a picture, and each format page names its source. They are cross-checked to confirm the labels tile the sheet with margins that match on both sides to the last decimal, because a margin that is wrong by a thirty-second of an inch ruins a sheet of stock and you only find out after printing.

Barcodes are vector, never images

Code 128 encodes its data in the width of each bar. Many generators rasterise the barcode into a bitmap and place that image in the PDF, and at print scale the resampling and anti-aliasing that follows can shift a bar edge enough to change the effective width. That is a common cause of intermittent scan failures.

Here every bar is drawn as its own filled vector rectangle, positioned and sized in inches. A vector rectangle has no resolution to lose. Each format also reserves an explicit quiet zone on both sides of the symbol, and nothing is ever drawn inside it.

Printing correctly

Always print at actual size. Never "Fit to page" or "Shrink to fit" — both rescale the sheet slightly, and the error accumulates down the page until the bottom row prints across the die-cut gaps. Set printer margins to none. Run one test sheet on plain paper and hold it against real label stock before committing to a run.

Every format page also offers a blank template PDF: the same sheet with cut guides and no content, plus a printed one-inch reference line so a misscaled print is obvious before you use it.