This and That - Final Badge Merge Part 3
By Elizabeth B. Wright   August 2005

We are finally at the Merge part of our exercise in printing badges using The Print Shop Version 20. It’s a long journey, but I think helpful for those who have the job of maintaining rosters and printing badges for organizations.

To recap, first we designed a label, adding a logo at the top and two text boxes. We formatted the text boxes for member’s names and membership anniversary dates. See Illustration #1.

Next we learned to use the internal Address Book to enter the information required to produce the badges. As noted, the address book is built into the program and has few options for customization. But for our purpose, not much is needed. Remember, the Address Book is a form of database and as such can be used in a variety of ways. We entered member’s names and membership anniversary dates. We used the Title, First Name, Middle Inital (sic: the program’s spelling, not mine), and Last Name for the Name text box and clicked “Apply stretch text” from the drop down menu under “Text.” In the smaller text box we used the Organization field to contain the anniversary date of membership. Because our particular Computer Club issues memberships based on the anniversary date one year from the date of joining, we need this field to keep track of each member’s anniversary status. In the Organization field in the Address Book, we entered the renewal date for members’ dues. Clubs with an annual renewal date for all members at the same time can use this same space to enter some other pertinent information or leave the text box out all together.

After entering all the data in the Address Book, badges can be printed for all or selected individuals, using the same database.

Using the steps below, I suggest you use plain paper for a trial printout before using your badge paper stock. Hold the plain paper copy behind your badge stock with a strong light showing through them from the back to be sure the badges that will be printed align properly with your particular paper. If they don’t align, then you can either choose a different paper category or use plain lightweight card stock and cut the badges apart manually after printing. Changing the label size within the program is very difficult and won’t be covered in this tutorial.

Illustration #2 is the print preview from my HP printer and shows how the printed names can shrink or enlarge to fill the text box space allotted to them.

Step 1: Load your paper into your printer. Left Click on File>Print.
From the dialog box that opens, Left Click on “Setup”. My HP printer has the option under “Properties/Features” to check a box to “Show HP Preview”. This is very useful and if you can find a similar option for your printer, check it. The Print Preview option in The Print Shop is not very useful. It fails to show all the names you plan to print, whereas my HP preview has that feature.

After closing the printer “Setup” screen by Left Clicking “OK”, the program returns to the Merge dialog box.

Step 2: Left Click on “Merge Names”.
Then Left Click on “Select List”. The file you are seeking will have the extension .ab2. If you saved your Address Book in a folder of your own choosing, you will need to navigate to it using the “Look in” bar at the top of the dialog box. If you let the program use its default Save feature, the Address Book you created should appear in the list that is shown when the box opens. When you find your book, Left Click on it and then Left Click “OK”. The names in your Address Book will appear on the screen.

Step 3: You can either:
Left Click on “Select All” if you plan to print badges for every name in the list, (good for the first time you use the program for your club)
or
Hold down the <CTRL> key and Left Click on just the names you want to print.
Left Click “OK” and the original dialog box will appear on your screen.

Step 4: Left Click “Print” and you will begin the print process with your printer. If you have been able to have the option to preview the printing process, you can see if the program used the names you chose for the printout. With my HP printer, when I close the Print Preview screen, the printer then prints my labels.

After the print operation finishes, the main screen will reflect the information in the first label printed. If some of the placeholders remained unused in the first label, e.g. “Title”, those placeholders will still reflect the codes for the anticipated information.

Also, the spaces provided between the placeholders will be included in each label, with or without information in those spaces, but these are not particularly noticeable in the final product.

Elizabeth Wright is a member of the CCOKC and a regular writer for the eMonitor