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Macros, tips, and templates for Corel® WordPerfect® for Windows®
© Copyright 1996-2008 by Barry MacDonnell. All Rights Reserved.

Here's how quickly and easily to fill up Avery® sheets to make duplicate copies of

• return address labels
• business cards
• shipping labels
• inventory stickers
• log sheets

There are a several ways to create multiple copies of the same label or card: You can use

• WordPerfect's merge feature (the "traditional" approach); this limits the number of identical copies you can make in one pass to 255; or
• copy-and-paste to duplicate the first label or card until you fill up the sheet; or
• the LABLCOPY macro, available here

[LABLCOPY is a WordPerfect macro (version 6 and later) that fills up blank Avery® (or similar) stock with copies of the same master label or card. It uses a method to ensure changes in font sizes, line justification, and graphics will copy accurately to the remaining labels or cards. It also gets rid of unwanted underlines if you enter an e-mail address or Web site on the label or card.]

• other methods, such as inserting a watermark or creating a header (both a "repeating elements") and then using multiple presses of <Ctrl+Enter> to produce the duplicate items.

Which is really the best way to make duplicate labels or cards?

I've used the "merge method" (as demonstrated in the test below) instead of copy-and-paste in earlier versions of my LABLCOPY macro but found it unreliable with more complex formatting. With simple labels, the merge method works fine as does copy-and-paste. However, LABLCOPY only requires a mouse click after you tell it how many labels or cards you wish to duplicate, so it saves time, too.

By the way, the easiest copy-and-paste method makes use of the Edit, Repeat Next Action feature. For example:

• Use Format, Labes to set up the first label. Then type in the text on the first label followed by <Ctrl+Enter> to insert a hard page break and start a new label.
• Select (with Edit, Select All) the label's text and the following [HPg] code, and copy (Ctrl+C) everything to the clipboard.
• Put the cursor on the second (blank) label.
• Select Edit, Repeat Next Action... and fill in the number of labels you want minus one. Click OK.
• Paste (Ctrl+V) the clipboard contents at the cursor location.

However, this copy-and-paste method has limitations: It won't pick up margin changes on a label or business card and use them on the second and subsequent labels or cards.

A simple test with a simple label demonstrates the lack of reliability using the merge method (and the copy-and-paste method) to create duplicates

Here's a simple test that demonstrates what the merge method does when you make simple margin adjustments or font changes (common formatting tasks) on a label:

First create a shipping label (with Format, Labels) such as you might use on a large manila envelope or a box. (Avery #5163 labels, for example.) Format the "master" label as you might format a letter envelope: Your address in the upper left, and the recipient's address below it, indented. For example:

Jane Doe 123 Main Street Portland, OR 99999   John Q. Smith 4567 South Street NW Seattle, WA 99999

• Specifically:
  • Click Format, Labels. Choose the label definition, then click Select. A single label should appear onscreen. On the first line in the label, type your name and address.
  • Space down 2 or 3 lines, then change the font type to something different from the return address. For example, if the return address is in 12-point Arial, use 14-point Times New Roman for the recipient.
  • Tab in a couple of times and type a mailing address (or drag the left margin guideline inward).
• Now run a merge using the standard WordPerfect merge method:
  • Click on Tools, then on Merge, then on Perform merge;
  • Click on the Options button in the Perform Merge dialog window;
  • Enter the number of labels on the label sheet in the "Number of copies for each record" box;
  • Click OK to return to the Perform Merge dialog;
  • Click the Merge button.

When I do this, I get a sheet like this where the first label is fine, but all others are not. (The same is true if I use the copy-and-paste method.)

With the merge method, the entire label for labels #2-#10 is in Times NR, 14-point, and if I've set the left margin, the remaining margins are wrong. (One fix for this is to reset the font and margins at the bottom of the first label. But I've found that sometimes even this doesn't work -- assuming I remember to do it!)

However, when I play LABLCOPY on the very same master label, I get perfect duplicates of the master label.

As a bonus, there are no hypertext blue underlines under e-mail or web addresses, which are normally undesirable on business cards, labels, or other printed materials.

As I've said many times, the merge method works most of the time, but it stumbles over some simple format changes. It also takes half a dozen mouse clicks to drill down into a menu and three dialog boxes, whereas LABLCOPY takes one click to load the macro (assuming it's assigned to a toolbar) and one more to play it.