If you use Linux, you MUST try gLabels

Download it now, use it now.

http://glabels.sourceforge.net/

This is a beautiful program, a well-balanced combination of power, simplicity, good design, and ease of use. Thanks to Keith for pointing it out to me.

There's no Windows or Mac version, sadly.

Among the things you can do are:
- automatically (no effort on your party) suppress empty address lines
- do bar codes
- point straight to a CSV or similar format file to bring in records
- deselect records you don't want to print
- add graphics and drawing shapes
- apply formatting
- easily preview the whole sheet

Here's a screen shot with a summary of what you do. I'll do more detailed instructions later but here's the quick info. I love it.

 

Comments

[analogtek]

I use it all time too! You Can also do custom labels and modifi the pre made one's.. But is does not do curved text :(..

[Elaine]

Thanks for the reminder. I've been dragging my feet about some items I volunteered to mail, and this should help.

[yareckon]

Wow, thanks for the article, I just used glabels to save me from a horrible hour trying to work around a bug in openoffice.org mailmerge that kept merging only the first 5 records! Thank YOU!!!

[Solveig]

Hi yareckon,

I'm glad it helped! It's a dandy little program.

[Elaine]

Actually produced my labels this morning, and I was very pleased with the results.

[Solveig]

Excellent! Now tell 10 people and spread the ease of use. ;>

[Witchlight]

Now if I could only get it to save as a pdf or something useful for kinko's I'd be extremely happy. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Carl Lowenstein]

Glabels print -> preview generates a PDF in /tmp and tells you the name of the file in the header bar of the preview window. All you have to do is copy the generated PDF (change its cryptic name to something you prefer).