Printing labels from Excel on a Mac

Why the usual instructions break

Word for Mac has a labels feature, but it is not the same wizard as the Windows one and it is not in the same place. The step-by-step guides that dominate search results describe a Windows dialog sequence, so following them on a Mac means translating each step to a differently named menu — and some steps have no equivalent at all.

The data source is the harder part. Connecting Word for Mac to an Excel workbook has historically been the flakiest corner of the feature, and depending on version you may be asked to grant file access repeatedly, or find the connection silently dropped when the workbook is closed.

Then there is the question of whether you have Word at all, and whether a mail merge earns its trouble even when you do. A Mac bought for home or study frequently has Pages and Numbers instead, and the Microsoft 365 web apps do not include the labels wizard, so a subscription is not necessarily enough either.

What to do instead

Use the tool on this page instead: it runs in the browser, so the process is identical on macOS to what it is anywhere else, and no part of it depends on which office suite is installed. Safari, Chrome, Firefox and Edge all work.

You have two ways in. Upload the .xlsx file directly, which works whether it came from Excel, Numbers exported to Excel format, or a Google Sheets download. Or open the spreadsheet, select the cells, copy, and paste them into the paste box — macOS puts tab-separated text on the clipboard exactly as Windows does, and the tool reads that.

Printing from macOS

In Preview's print dialog, set Scale to 100% rather than "Scale to Fit", expanding the details first if the dialog is collapsed. This is the macOS equivalent of the "fit to page" trap and it matters just as much: a few percent of rescaling walks the bottom row of labels off its die-cut.

Under Paper Handling, leave "Scale to fit paper size" unticked. Choose US Letter as the paper size, since every Avery sheet format here is Letter. If your default is A4, an otherwise perfect layout will print shifted.

Print one page on plain paper first and hold it up against a real label sheet. Preview's own zoom does not tell you anything about physical scale, so the paper test is the only reliable check.