Creating A Lable Template for Apple Pages

If you have been using the Apple Pages program, you are in for a surprise. Some of the most basic templates are missing.

There is a lot to love about Pages, but Apple should have thought about developing commonly used templates first or at least encouraged the users to develop those templates. For example, if you use Avery labels, it is likely that you will be looking for templates to the labels for your run of the mill work - such as creating labels!!

I know you are saying why create labels in Pages when you can use Address Book to do the same thing. But there are times when you need just a sheet of labels. For instance, my wife needs a sheet of labels to label the caddies of tea she sells in her business - Jaya Teas. I looked around and did not find any thing suitable. So I did the next best thing - started to create one. And now that I have created one, I don't see a reason for not sharing it with others. You are welcome to it here... but if you want to know how I did it, here's how I created the return address label template Avery 5167:

Open a blank document. Click open the inspector. In the page lay out, I changed the Right and left margins to 0.25 inches each. Then I changed the Top margin to 0.5 inches. I left the bottom margin to 0. Why? I'll tell you in a second.

I also reduced the header and footer values to zero each.

Knowing that the lables are 4 columns x 20 labels on each sheet, after clicking into the page, I selected the Columns icon and inserted 4 columns.

Then, I inserted a table into the first column by selecting, Insert > Table from the menu. This brings up a 4x3 table with a header row. I reduced the number of columns from 3 to 1, and increased the number of rows from 4 to 80.

Unselect the header button, and the Automatically Resize button in the Inspector. Don't ask me why, just do it.

Then I adjusted the column width and table height. The Avery label is 1.75 inch wide and 0.5 inches tall. Since the four column layout only allows for 1.68 inches of writing space per column, no matter how hard you try to increase the width to 1.75 inches, the program will revert it back to 1.68 inches. However, the height will adjust to 0.5 inches. This is because, you had earlier reduced the bottom margin to zero. If you were to leave the bottom margin at 0.5 inches, you will not be able to get 0.5 inches height for each of the labels (..and what ever you put in the bottom lables will actually print just a bit above, causing misalignment). But if you reduce the bottom margin to zero, the table will adjust itself.

Print out the page and see if the table aligns well with your label sheet.

Now, there is one more step left - removing the table border. Click on the table so that the entire table is selected, not just one cell. Then, selct the "graphics inspector' (the one with a square and a circle in the icon). Click the black color box next to stroke, and in the box next to brightness scale, change the number from 0% to 92% (or 95% of you like). This will render the border of the cells barely visible and they won't print well on the labels (you don't want them to print on your labels). However there is enough of an outline left for you to discern when you need to type in something.

Thats it. Save the template as AV5167 or OL25CX or what ever brand's code you want to use. So, next time you need it, it will be right there for you.

Again, if all you need is a return label template, just click here and download it...open it in Pages, and save it as a template.

Enjoy!