If you’ve ever spent hours at work doing mailings, cursed your printer for printing outside the lines on your labels, or moaned “There has got to be a better way to do this,” here’s the solution you’ve been looking for. Working smarter, not harder, with the OpenOffice label templates will save you time, effort, and (if you want) make really cool-looking labels.

Using the right tool for the job

I believe in using tools. And if the tools are easy to use and free, so much the better. That’s why I’m a big proponent of using templates. Templates are one of the best ways to save time, effort, and be sure that your documents are consistent when they need to be.

Templates make life easier when you use them for letters, documents, brochures, etc., but they really make life easier when you use them for labels. The spacing for your label documents has to be extraordinarily precise to make sure that the text is printed exactly where it needs to be—I’ve tried making my own and while it’s possible, it’s really not worth it. It’s not worth it primarily because there are so many excellent pre-existing templates to use instead.

There might be a few sheets of labels somewhere without a corresponding OpenOffice.org label template, but they’re rare. You can print on virtually any label sheets you want with the templates included in OpenOffice.org, and the templates available on the web, such as those from WorldLabel.

This article is about how to use the OpenOffice.org templates, in particular the WorldLabel templates, to print the labels you need. I’ll talk about how to download them, install them, use them as they are, and how to customize them with graphics and other features.

I’ll also touch on how to use the OpenOffice.org label wizard; you can use the label wizard each time, or save the template you create in the same template repository with your WorldLabel templates.

About WorldLabel

WorldLabel lets you download free templates in OpenOffice.org format. You can download label templates in .stw or .ott file format for Openoffice.org 1.1x and 2.0 versions for Writer. You can look them up by the number on your Avery label sheet box or read the description. There’s a huge number of templates including those for CD and DVD, video, mailing, shipping, and diskettes, and with square or round corners. The templates are XML Open Document Format (ODF), Public Domain, licensed under GPL.

Downloading WorldLabel templates

The first step, of course, is to get the templates onto your computer. First, make a directory where you’re going to put them. Create a directory at C:\labels or home/labels, for instance, though you can put them wherever you want.

Next, go to the URL for OpenOffice.org templates.

• If you want letter-size templates (this is what you want in the US) go to this URL.
• If you want A4 sized templates go to this URL.

You can also just download one template at a time. You’ll see a list of templates. Find the one you want, by its corresponding Avery number (this is printed on your box of Avery labels), by the dimensions, or by the name if you know the WorldLabel name.

Figure 1: WorldLabel templates

To download the template, find the “Download” link, under the version you want. If you’re using the current version of OpenOffice.org, use the link under the 2.0 version for .ott files. Then right-click on “Download” and choose “Save Target As…”.

When the dialog box appears, specify the labels directory that you made, and click “Save”.

Repeat the downloading steps for any additional templates you want.

Installing the templates in OpenOffice.org

Once you’ve got the WorldLabel templates, you should add them to the template repository and tell OpenOffice.org where they are. Strictly speaking, you don’t have to do any of this, since you can simply choose File→Open and find the template file. However, OpenOffice.org has a specific way to organize templates which is easier to use once you’ve got it set up.

This applies to any template that you download, as well as any template that you create.

There are several ways to do this; I’ll show you three.

Copying to a directory

Copy your templates to the appropriate directory. The directory is (OpenOffice)_\share\template\_language.

Just paste your directory of templates into that location.

Figure 2: Copying templates to the templates directory

Importing a single template

That other way was so easy, why bother with anything else? Good question. This approach is good if you want to just bring in a particular template and maybe put it in another category like “templates for the month-end reports”.

Figure 3: Choosing to import the template

1. Choose File→Templates→Organize.
2. Select a category on the left. (If you need to create one, right-click on an existing category, choose “New”, and immediately type the name of the new category.)
3. Right-click on the category and choose “Import Template” (figure 3).
4. Find the template and click “Open”.
5. The template will appear in the category.

Figure 4: The imported template appears