Chapter 20

Magical Mass Mailings

In This Chapter

Creating labels fast, with minimum hassle

Formatting labels for specific situations

The Report Wizard (covered in Chapters 17 and 19) is just the tip of the Access reporting iceberg. If you’re so inclined, you can use Access to generate useful printouts that you probably never thought of as reports — mailing or product labels. So grab your basket (and your little dog, too) because we’re off to see the wizard again, as Access provides friendly and magical helpers to see you through.

Massive Mailings with the Label Wizard

So you have 5,000 catalogues, newsletters, or some other mailable items printed and ready to go out to your adoring (or soon-to-be adoring) public. You also have a big Access database full of names and addresses. How can you introduce these two and get them started on what will surely be a wonderful relationship? Although e-blasts have become even more common as ways to mass “mail” your clients and potential customers, there are still marketing and informative items that (a) require printing and (b) have to be put in the actual mail.

With the Access Label Wizard, your sheets of labels and your database will be hooked up in no time flat. With the Label Wizard, you can (almost instantly!) generate labels that work with just about any commercial label product on the market. If your local stationery or office-supply store carries them, Access can print your data on them. All you need to know is what kind of label you have, which data should go on the labels, and who’s going to slap the labels on the mailings after you’ve finished your part of the job.

The names and addresses on labels are just part of the story. You can also print product labels, with product names, numbers, and inventory locations on them, helping your warehouse personnel find and put away products. If you have the data — whatever it might be — and the blank labels, you can bring the two together to print labels for just about any purpose.

Microsoft engineers put the specifications for hundreds of labels from popular label manufacturers right in the Label Wizard. If you happen to use labels from Avery, Herma, Zweckform, or any other maker listed in the wizard’s manufacturer list — it’s a long, long list, so yours is probably in there — just tell the wizard the manufacturer’s product number. The wizard sets up the report dimensions for you according to the maker’s specifications. Life just doesn’t get much easier than that.

Before firing up the Label Wizard, decide on the information you’ll need for the labels:

The Label Wizard uses the active table’s fields by default.

You can create a query that includes only those fields you want to print, drawing those fields from the tables that currently house them.

Chapters 11 through 14 show the procedures for creating queries. It can be as simple as selecting the table that contains the data destined for your label, querying for all the records, and choosing to include only some of the fields. Or you can query for certain records — again, specifying which fields to include — and you’re good to go. Call it one more great reason to check out the query chapters — especially Chapter 12 for the basics — before you embark on this process.

Of course, if your label information can all be found in a single table, make sure that table is open or selected in the All Access Objects panel — and follow these steps to build a label report:

1. In the database window, click the Ribbon’s Create tab and then make your way over to the Reports section of the tab.

The Create tab’s many tools appear, including the Report and Report Wizard buttons discussed in Chapters 17 and 19.

2. Click the Report section’s Labels button to start the Label Wizard.

The Label Wizard dialog box opens, as shown in Figure 20-1.

3. Click the Filter by Manufacturer drop-down list and select your label manufacturer.

Access assumes you have Avery labels; if you do, there’s no need to perform this step — just move on to Step 4.

Figure 20-1: The Label Wizard is prepared to make label magic!

4. Scroll through the list of label types and find your label’s product number — and when you locate it, click it to select it.

The three-column list includes Product Number, Dimensions, and Number Across information.

Find the product number on your package of labels in the list. If you don’t see it, check the packaging for an equivalent product number that the manufacturer recommends. If you buy a generic or store brand of labels, often the Avery equivalent is printed right on the packaging; you can look for that number in the list.

5. Click Next.

The Label Wizard asks you for your font choices, as in Figure 20-2.

6. Choose the font, size, font weight (to determine whether you want your text to be light or very bold — click the drop list to see your choices for the font you’ve chosen), and the text color you want for your labels; then click Next.

The next page of the Label Wizard appears; here’s where you choose which fields from the active table you want to include in your labels.

7. Double-click the first field you want to include on the labels.

As shown in Figure 20-3, there are two boxes — Available Fields and Prototype Label. When fields from the left-hand box are double-clicked, they end up in the right-hand box.

8. After the field name appears in the Prototype Label box, type a space after it so there’s a space between the first field and the second one. If the field needs to be on the next line, you can press Enter.

Figure 20-2: Choose font, size, weight, and text color for your labels.

Figure 20-3: Choose your fields from the Available Fields box.

9. Double-click the next field to insert into your label and place a space or press Enter after the field (to advance to the next line), as in Step 8.

Continue double-clicking fields to add them to the Prototype — being careful to put spaces between fields and to press the Enter key to move to a new line in the Prototype box, as needed. Figure 20-4 shows a completed address label.

10. Click Next.

Now the dialog box changes to offer choices for sorting your labels.

11. Select the field by which to sort your labels — such as by last name or by postal code.

As shown in Figure 20-5, you can sort by more than one field; the order in which you add fields to the Sort By box dictates the sort order.

Figure 20-4: Space your fields, place them on separate lines, and include commas and other symbols between fields.

Figure 20-5: Choose the field(s) you want to use to sort your labels.

If you plan a bulk mailing with discounted postage, check with your local postal authority for details about how to organize your mail. Post offices often want the mail presorted by zip or postal code; check first because each post office may handle things differently. Rather than drive your friendly postal workers over the edge, bring your mail sorted the way they want it.

12. Click Next.

The next step in the wizard process appears, as shown in Figure 20-6.

Figure 20-6: Name your Labels report.

13. Type a name for your Labels report.

14. Leave the default option chosen (See the Labels as They Will Look Printed) and click Finish.

The Labels report appears onscreen, as shown in Figure 20-7, and you can print as desired (by using the Print command, as usual). You can also save your work for future reprintings of the same report.

Figure 20-7: You can print your labels now and save them for later.

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