Labels not lining up

A 3% shrink takes less than a millimeter off one inch, which is easy to miss against an inch ruler. Measure in millimeters, or measure something longer: on the Avery 5160 template the ten rows of outlines stack to exactly 10 in, and the three columns span 8.125 in from the left edge of the first to the right edge of the last. An error too small to see over one inch is ten times larger over ten. The barcode calibration sheet carries a 6.000 in scale line if you want a longer one to measure.

The one-inch line sits in the bottom margin, so it appears on most sheet templates, Avery 5160 among them. Roll labels have no margin to hold it: each label is its own PDF page, so for a thermal or DYMO roll check instead that the label size in the printer driver matches the label. Thermal labels from Excel covers those printers.

This one print checks scaling, paper size and driver margins at once, for the price of a sheet of paper. Run it again whenever you change computer, program or printer, because the setting that moved your labels belongs to them, not to the file.

A constant offset moves the whole page as one piece. Every label shifts the same way by the same distance, and the 1.000 in line still measures an inch. The layout is the right size; something moved the page, such as the paper size setting, a margin the driver adds, or the sheet sitting against the wrong guide.

Drift means the spacing between printed labels differs from the spacing between the die-cuts, so the error adds up label by label. Scaling does this. Shrink a page to 97% and every inch on it loses 0.03 in, which is nothing across one label and nearly a third of a label ten rows down. Scaling is anchored somewhere, usually the top-left corner or the center of the page, and the labels nearest that point look fine. That is why a scaled sheet can look right at the top and wrong at the bottom, or right in the middle and wrong at both ends.

A template for a different sheet drifts in the same way, because its label pitch is different, but the 1.000 in line measures true. That one measurement tells the two apart.

Skew is the fourth pattern: the text runs at a slight angle to the cuts, and one side of the sheet is further off than the other. The sheet turned as it fed, which is covered under feeding below.

The names depend on the program. Adobe Acrobat and Reader list Fit, Actual size, Shrink oversized pages and Custom Scale under Page Sizing & Handling. Adobe describes Fit as reducing or enlarging each page to fit the printable area of the paper, and Actual size as printing without scaling (Adobe Help). Preview on a Mac has a Scale box that takes a percentage, and a separate Scale to Fit option (Apple Support); the Mac guide covers the rest of the Mac print dialog. Some dialogs keep scale under More settings; Avery’s printing tips say to set it to Custom and 100% there (Avery).

Fit is the setting that catches people out. A printer that cannot print to the very edge of the paper has a printable area smaller than the page; Canon’s manuals, for example, describe a margin the printer leaves around the paper to maintain print quality (Canon). A full US Letter page does not fit inside that area, so Fit shrinks it.

Here is what a small shrink does on an Avery 5160 sheet. At 97%, the 1.000 in line prints at 0.97 in, about 24.6 mm. The bottom edge of the last row sits 10.5 in from the top of the page; shrunk toward the top-left corner, it lands 0.315 in higher, nearly a third of a label. Shrunk toward the center, the middle rows barely move and the top and bottom rows each move about 0.15 in toward the middle.

PDFs from Print Labels From Excel carry a setting that asks the viewer to print at actual size. Not every viewer honors it, so check the dialog anyway, particularly the first time you print from a new computer or program.

Avery’s recommended printer settings start with the same two things: the page size for your product, 8.5 × 11 in for most US products, and scaling at 100% or Actual size (Avery).

The two sizes are close enough to confuse and different enough to matter. A4 is 210 × 297 mm, about 8.27 × 11.69 in, so it is narrower and taller than Letter. Depending on the driver, a Letter layout sent to a printer set to A4 is shrunk to fit the narrower width, to about 97%, or placed on a page of a different shape and shifted. An A4 layout printed on Letter paper has the same problem in reverse.

The setting can live in more than one place: the print dialog, and the printer’s own Preferences or Properties, which is where Avery points you when the dialog does not show it. Check both. In Print Labels From Excel the label sheets are grouped by page size, US Letter first and A4 at the end, and each PDF page is the size of the sheet it was laid out for.

Borderless printing is the first thing to check on an inkjet. To reach the edge of the paper, the printer enlarges the page slightly; Canon’s documentation says the printed image is enlarged to fill the whole page and that the edges may be cropped (Canon). On a label sheet that enlargement behaves like scaling: the layout grows from its anchor point and the outer labels drift outward.

Some drivers also add a margin of their own, or offer a setting that moves the image on the page. Either one shifts every label by the same amount, which is the constant-offset pattern. Set them to none or zero and print the plain-paper test again.

A printer’s unprintable edge is a different matter. It cannot be switched off, and with Actual size selected, whatever falls inside it is cropped rather than moved, as Adobe describes for pages that do not fit the paper. If the plain-paper test is missing a sliver of the outermost outlines, that is what happened, and nothing else on the page has shifted.

Avery reuses layouts: many of its products share one template under different product numbers (Avery). Avery 5160, 8160 and 5260 are one layout, for example, and Print Labels From Excel lists each number so you can pick the one on your box. Avery’s US numbers and its A4 numbers are separate series, though. Avery 5160 is a US Letter sheet of 30 labels, 1 × 2-5/8 in; Avery L7160 is an A4 sheet of 21, 63.5 × 38.1 mm. In Word they sit under different label vendors, Avery US Letter and Avery A4/A5.

If your labels are a store brand, look on the package for the Avery number they are meant to match, and choose that. Then run the plain-paper test before a full run, because a matching sheet is still cut by a different maker. If your sheet is not listed at all, compare measurements: each template page gives the label size, labels per sheet, top and side margins and pitch, and a layout that matches all of them is the one to use.

Only Print Labels From Excel’s Avery 5160 layout, which 8160 and 5260 share, has been measured on real stock. The others come from an open label database and are checked arithmetically on every build, and each one’s page carries a fit-check note. For those sheets the plain-paper test is not a nicety.

Most of Avery’s printing advice is about getting a label sheet through the printer square (recommended settings, misalignment help):

• Use the manual feed tray, or whichever tray gives the straightest paper path.
• Fill the tray only half to three-quarters full, and snug the paper guides gently against the edges of the sheet.
• Feed one sheet at a time if sheets go through together or crooked.
• In the printer’s preferences, set the paper or media type to Labels, Heavyweight or Cardstock.

Skew is the one pattern the print dialog cannot fix, and it can vary from sheet to sheet. If one sheet is fine and the next is not, look at the tray before the settings.

Each label is placed where the sheet’s measurements put it. On a layout that has been measured on real stock, as Avery 5160 has, a shift that appears on paper was added after the PDF was made, by a setting, the driver or the paper path, and fixing it there fixes it for every program you print from.

If the shift survives those checks, use the print offset. In step 3 of the tool, open Labels printing a little off?, measure how far the text on your plain-paper test sits from where it should be, and move it back: a positive number moves every label right or down, a minus sign left or up, up to a quarter of an inch. The preview moves with it, the print summary states the offset every time, and it is saved in this browser for that sheet. The blank template is never shifted, so it stays a fair test. Roll labels have no offset: on a roll the page is the label, so a shift there is set in the printer driver.

On the other layouts, the measurements themselves are one more thing the plain-paper test checks. If a layout is off by the same amount on a printer that prints Avery 5160 correctly, tell us at hello@printlabelsfromexcel.com with the product number and what you measured.

Some printers also have a print position or registration adjustment of their own, which fixes the shift for every program. Avery’s Design & Print has the same idea as an Adjust Print Alignment option for its own templates (Avery).