Avery label templates

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 can be wrong for the other by a sixteenth of an inch, which is enough to push text across the cuts.

Print Labels From Excel holds 55 of those layouts: 43 on US Letter and 12 on A4, resolving to 27 distinct die-cuts once the product numbers that share a sheet are collapsed. They are measurements and nothing else, where the cuts fall on the page. There is no artwork or clip art here; what goes on each label is your text, from a spreadsheet column or typed once, plus a Code 128 barcode or QR code if you add one. The tool also prints 7 thermal and DYMO roll sizes, which have no sheet layout at all: each label is a page of its own.

What differs is the pack size, the face material and the printer the stock is made for. Avery makes 5160 and 5260 for laser printers and 8160 for inkjet, and sells 5160 in a pack of 3,000 labels, 5260 and 8160 in packs of 750. Avery’s own template page for 5160 lists 5260 and 8160 among the products that use it.

So if a form asks for “Avery 5160” and your box says 5260, you are holding the right sheet. Choose either in the label tool 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.

Across the 55 layouts here, 11 die-cuts are sold under more than one product number. The comparison table marks each of them “same sheet as”, so you can check a number on your box against one you already know.

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. Avery’s A4 product numbers start with a letter, as in L7160 or J8160. Word’s label dialog asks for the same number, and Microsoft’s instructions point you to the package for it.

If you have loose sheets and no packaging, measure instead. Count the labels and measure one: 30 labels at one inch by two and five-eighths is the 5160 family, 10 labels at two inches by four is the 5163 sheet, and 30 long, thin ones two-thirds of an inch tall is the 5366 file folder sheet. Check the paper too: US Letter is 8.5 by 11 inches, and A4 is 210 by 297 mm, a little narrower and taller. The comparison table filters by page size and label type, which narrows a measured sheet to a handful of candidates. Then print the blank template and hold it against the sheet to confirm before committing.

Those three cover most jobs; the rest are variations on width and height.

For addresses, start with the Avery 5160 address sheet. Each of its 30 labels, one inch by two and five-eighths, holds a three-line address comfortably, and 5160 is by far the most searched-for Avery product number. 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 return addresses, Avery 5167 fits 80 small labels to a sheet, and a layout with no columns in it prints the same address on every one; see return address labels.

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. The four-inch width also lets a barcode run wide, which matters: bar width is what decides whether a printed symbol scans. For bigger boxes, Avery 5164 puts 6 labels of 3-1/3" x 4" on a sheet. Amazon sellers labeling FBA stock can skip the format question and use the Amazon FBA label preset, which is 5160 with the barcode and text lines already laid out.

For filing, Avery 5366 is the file folder sheet: long and shallow, 30 to a sheet. Two lines is the practical maximum at two-thirds of an inch.

For name badges, Avery 5395 holds 8 badges of 2-1/3" x 3-3/8" on a sheet, and name tags from Excel sets each name large and bold.

For barcodes and QR codes, any of these sheets works. Barcode labels and QR code labels set the tool up for each, and both are drawn as vector shapes rather than images, so they print sharp at any size.

For a roll printer, sheets do not apply. The tool prints 7 thermal and DYMO roll sizes one label per PDF page, for Zebra, Rollo and DYMO LabelWriter drivers; see thermal labels from Excel.

Download the blank PDF. Every layout has one: the sheet with cut guides and nothing else. Most also carry a printed line exactly 1.000 inch long in the margin, so you can confirm your printer is not rescaling; a few sheets (5159, 8165, L7161, L7168 and J8168) have margins too narrow to hold it. Use it as an alignment check, or print it and write on it. Sheets with their own page have a download button there, and step 3 of the label tool offers the same template for any multi-label sheet in its picker.

Fill it from a spreadsheet. If you have a list of names, addresses, product codes or folder titles, the label tool reads it and lays out the sheet for you. Add an Excel, CSV or Numbers file, or paste cells straight out of Excel or Google Sheets. Each line of the label is a line of text with column names in braces, such as {Name} or {City}, {State} {ZIP}, and a US address list is laid out for you. There is a full walkthrough on the how to print labels from Excel page, the Word method is in the mail merge labels guide if you would rather do it that way, and there are 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 PDFs you make; each one holds up to 10,000 labels.

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. The PDFs Print Labels From Excel makes ask the viewer to print at actual size, but not every viewer honors that, so check the print dialog. Check the paper size as well. Every US Letter layout has to be printed on Letter paper and every A4 layout on A4; printing one on the other shifts every label.

The Avery 5160, 8160 and 5260 layout has been measured against real stock. The others are taken from the LibreOffice label database and checked arithmetically on every build, and that same database reproduces the print-verified 5160 geometry exactly. They have not themselves been confirmed on physical stock, so the plain-paper check matters more on those, and each of their pages carries a fit-check note saying so. If a test sheet comes out off, labels not lining up walks through each cause.