At the last Bournemouth meeting. A non member turned up (things must be looking up) and was asking about printing labels. Well, if you're the gent concerned, you must have joined and I think this might help.
Have a look at the tenth article down on the latest Tidbits. It might be a bit late for this years Christmas Card list, but next year you'll be flying.
Very interesting, the downside is that it will cost you a further $49 or £49 at current exchange rates in order to print labels. The fact still remains that there doesn't seem to be an Apple application, be it Address Book or Pages, that will enable you to print customised labels. You can print labels from address book but you have to edit individual details if you want a different format. Now in MS Word.............
I have been using the Database module of Appleworks (remember that?) to make address labels for years and have nurtured the application for just this purpose. You have to fiddle a bit to get your addresses on Avery labels but it isn't much of a deal. It seems that Appleworks is no longer available but I am happy to make mine available if someone will tell me in words of less than one syllable how to do that!
I think it is astonishing (I am being polite here) that iWork does not have a Database module.
I think iWork does not have a database module as it may conflict with Bento which is a Filemaker product, Filemaker being owned by Apple. Personally, I think Bento may become part of iWork but will increase the price.
Yes I have joined and first let me say thank you to all of you who have responded to John's post.
Although you can print labels from the address book it was too limited for my purpose. I investigated Open Office 3 and was very surprised to find how good this is. The spread sheet (Calc) is very similar to Excel and can be used to set up a table of names and addresses that can be used in the document (Writer) app. Easy for me as I had an existing one in Excel. There is also a Database for those who need this. The documentation particularly the Getting Started Guide is excellent. This runs to 433 pages! It is downloadable (6MB) well indexed and very readable. There are clear explanations of how to do things such as mail merge and lots of full colour diagrams.
If you have not looked at Open Office 3 then I suggest you put it on your to do list. It's free. http://www.openoffice.org/
There is, by the way, a small utility at: http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/internet_utilities/addressbooktocsvexporter.html
that allows you to turn your address book into a CSV file that can be read by Open Office's Calc.
I have found PearLabelizer quite useful. It takes its database input from Address Book, and gives quite a bit of flexibility in laying out the label design.
Have a look at http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/18734
This has been a very interesting thread to follow!
There seems now to be a fee for Open Office 3 - not very much admittedly but PearLabeliser looks very interesting and seems to fit my purposes & is free so I think I will stick to that, thanks for your post Steve.
"There seems now to be a fee for Open Office 3 "
If you follow my link it leads you to a screen with one option that is "Download Open Office free".
I did not pay any fee and I downloaded it very recently. You can make a contribution if you wish to but it is not mandatory.
Lionel will be demonstrating Open Office v3 at the meeting in Dorchester tomorrow [13th Jan] and will have a copy on his memory stick for anyone who wishes to have one. He will be considering issues of compatibility with MS Office.