Mailing label forms please

[StevenH]

I saw that there has been a lot of discussion on report designers/builders and I understand there will be that sort of functionality coming soon in ver 2.0

I did not see anything on mailing labels so I want to throw in my 2 cents. Labels are a specialized kind of form and I hope they will be part of the new release.

My primary app is for the management of individuals and businesses very similar but much simpler than most CRMs.

The thing that a large number of CRMs are missing is the ability to create mailing labels. I know that in this day and age you may be wondering who would want to mail something by "snail mail" when you can e-mail, twitter, skype, etc. And, for large customer databases they would export a CSV of the records to be mailed. Then email the CSV to a mailing service or printer who would print the name and address info...no need labels.

As a direct mail data processor I can see first hand that mailing labels are indeed critical, especially to the people with smaller databases of 10,000 to 20,000 and under. Yes, they will mail to several thousand at a time making labels impractical. But, many do a lot of small mailings internally as well. And that means the old peel-n-stick, self-adhesive labels are ideal. These guys end up exporting to Excel and then creating labels via Word. Some of my clients as me to do it for them because they can't figure it out.

And, I can tell you that many of my political clients would not bother with a CRM that did not have the ability to produce mailing labels.

Here's a few screenshots, these are for the most commonly used labels that are 3 columns of labels by 10 rows. Each label is 1 inch high x 2 5/8 inches wide with a spacer between labels across the each row of about 1/8 inch. There are no spacers between rows.

The designer must allow for very precise settings of the margin, spacing, and placement of the fields. Otherwise the labels tend to drift out of position by the time you get to the 3rd column or the 10th row resulting in the information printing on adjacent labels or just looking out of balance.

Here's the VFP 9 Page setup for labels:


Here's the label designer/builder:


Notice that you can have headers an footers. These are not critical and in my 30 or so years of printing labels have never use them.

Fields are dropped onto the form in much the same way as Lianja.

Notice too that you only design a single label. The page settings determine how many of them will printed across and down the page.

Here's a screenshot of what the resulting label report should look like. Don't worry, these are not real names and addresses.


I'd be happy to do a video of making a label in VFP and provide any other info that might be helpful.

Thanks,
Steve