Ensuring Addresses Line up Correctly

Whether you use AirPrinting directly from device or emailing the labels information and then printing, it is essential that the printer settings do not change the output from AddressLabels. The app produces a pdf file with all of the addresses in the correct place for the label. However, in some cases, the settings in the printer or the program used to print the emailed file, can be such that the output from the app gets changed, and the addresses do not line up correctly.

AirPrinting

If AirPrinting directly, it is important that the printer itself does not change the scaling of the information it receives from the app. The printer settings must be such that there is no scaling carried out. How this is done will depend on the printer. There follows an example from one user of AddressLabels:

“I’ll try to explain what I did on my Air Printer HP 5529 photosmart.
Under Address Labels ‘Heading’, Tap COPY. select SETTINGS. Tap RESIZE. Select CUSTOM 100%. Under PAPER SIZE. Select A4 or Letter – as appropriate.”

Thank-you to Ed Hogan who has provided me with some information with problems with AirPrint itself when using his HP Photosmart 6520. He found a solution using HP ePrint. This is what Ed has said:

The HP Photosmart 6520 has limitations working with Apple AirPrint. There aren’t any options to adjust margins, scaling, etc… Using AirPrint, the label alignment starts out, but progressively deteriorates.

The solution is to use “HP ePrint”(which has many more options / functions) to print the PDF attachment emailed by AddressLabels. Perfect!

Prior to getting and using AddressLabels, I had not used HP ePrint. So I learned something new. HP ePrint is a great app that has much more functionality than Apple AirPrint.

Ed has now purchased a new HP Envy 5660 printer which he says worked fine – “The new printer, HP Envy 5660, arrived this afternoon. After setting it, the first thing I did was to open AddressLabels and print the first sheet of address labels directly from the app – perfect alignment. So the only variable that changed was the printer. My 3 plus year old HP Photosmart 6520 would not print correctly aligned labels unless I emailed the PDF and use the “HP ePrint” app. So I am a happy camper. In other words, my 3 year old printer may have printing problems unless I use the HP app. The new HP printer works perfectly.”

Another user, Lisa, had a similar problem when using her printer. She was also using an HP6520 and HP ePrint. Although this worked last year, it did not this year (2016). Then Lisa found a solution – another app called PrinterPro.

So you need to install PrinterPro. Then email the AddressLabels labels pdf to yourself, and open the attachment in Mail, You can then tap the share button (square with up arrow) and select PrinterPro.

PrinterPro allows you to print pdf files, and has options for the scaling:

Emailing and Printing

The address list will be sent as a pdf file attachment.

It is essential that the program used prints the pdf file exactly as it shows on the screen. If the settings are wrong, the computer program might add margins, or scale the output such that the original dimensions are lost. The setting must print actual sixes with no scaling (or scaling set to 100%).

On a mac, you will probably use the Preview program to display and print the addresses. If so, ensure that scaling is 100%.

You will have misalignment problems if your Preview settings are as below:

To get correct alignment etc. make sure the scale is 100% as below:

Similarly, on Windows, when printing from Adobe, make sure there is no page scaling.