Avery label templates

What an Avery template actually is

A template is a description of where the labels sit on the page: how big each one is, how many there are, how far the first is from the top and left edges, and the distance from the start of one label to the start of the next. Nothing more. Print onto a sheet of labels and every word has to land inside a die-cut rectangle — if the layout is off, text prints across the gap between two labels and both are wasted.

The product number is how you identify which description applies. It is not a size. Two sheets can carry labels of the same nominal dimensions and still differ in their margins, and a template that is right for one will be wrong for the other by a sixteenth of an inch — which is enough to walk the bottom row off its die-cut.

Why several numbers share one template

The part that catches people out is that Avery sells one die-cut under several product numbers. 5160, 5260 and 8160 are the same grid to the thousandth of an inch: thirty labels, three across and ten down. What differs is the pack size, the face material and the printer the stock is made for — 8160 is coated for inkjet, 5160 and 5260 are laser stock. The same is true of 5163 and 8163.

So if a form asks for "Avery 5160" and your box says 5260, you are holding the right sheet. Set the tool to either and the output is identical. What you should not do is run inkjet stock through a laser printer: the fuser is hot enough to soften an adhesive that was never specified for it.

How to find your product number

Your Avery product number is printed on the packaging, usually large, as a four or five digit number on the front of the box or the flap of the sleeve, often with the label size beside it. On shrink-wrapped packs it is on the paper band. It is not printed on the label sheets themselves, so once the box is gone the number goes with it.

If you have loose sheets and no packaging, measure instead. Count the labels and measure one: thirty labels at one inch tall is the 5160 family, ten labels at two inches by four is the 5163 sheet, and thirty long thin ones is the 5366 file folder sheet. Then print the blank template and hold it against the sheet to confirm before committing.

Two ways to use a template here

Every format here offers two routes: download the blank template and print onto it yourself, or let the tool fill it from a spreadsheet. Both produce the same sheet geometry.

Download the blank PDF. Every format page has one. It is the sheet with cut guides and nothing else, plus a printed one-inch reference line so you can confirm your printer is not rescaling. Use it as an alignment check, or print it and write on it.

Fill it from a spreadsheet. If you have a list — names, addresses, product codes, folder titles — the label tool reads it and lays out the sheet for you. Upload an .xlsx or .csv, or paste cells straight out of Excel or Google Sheets, then assign each column to a line on the label. There is a full walkthrough on the how to print labels from Excel page, including the Word mail merge method if you would rather do it that way, and separate guides for address labels and Google Sheets.

Both run entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and there is no limit on how many labels you print.

Which format to choose

Use Avery 5160 for addresses, 5163 for shipping, and 5366 for file folders. Those three cover most jobs; the rest are variations on width and height.

For addresses, start with the Avery 5160 address sheet. Thirty per sheet at one inch by two and five-eighths holds a three-line address comfortably and is the format most people mean when they say "Avery labels". If your addresses carry company names or run long, the extra width of 5161 stops them shrinking, and 5162 adds a third more height again for four or five lines, or for larger type.

For shipping, use Avery 5163 on a laser printer or Avery 8163 on an inkjet. Two inches by four is large enough for a full delivery address at a size a courier can read at a glance, with room left for a reference number or a Code 128 barcode. It is also the format with the most room for barcodes, which matters: bar width is what decides whether a printed symbol scans. Amazon sellers labelling FBA stock can skip the format question and use the Amazon FBA label preset, which is 5160 with the barcode and text lines already mapped.

For filing, Avery 5366 is the only one of these shaped for a folder tab — long and shallow, thirty to a sheet. Two lines is the practical maximum at two-thirds of an inch.

Check the fit before you print on stock

Print the blank template on plain paper, hold it against a real sheet up to the light, and check the boxes land on the die-cuts. This is worth doing with any label template on any printer, whoever produced the measurements: paper size, driver margins and print scaling all shift a sheet, and one sheet of plain paper is cheaper than one sheet of labels.

Print at actual size. "Fit to page" and "Shrink oversized pages" rescale by a percent or two, which is invisible on plain paper and ruinous on labels — the error accumulates down the sheet until the bottom row prints across the gaps. Check the paper size is US Letter, since every format here is Letter and the same layout on A4 comes out shifted.

The 5160 family has been measured against real stock. The others are taken from an open label-template database and checked arithmetically on every build, and that same database reproduces our print-verified 5160 geometry exactly — but they have not themselves been confirmed on physical stock, so the plain-paper check matters more on those.