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[Solved] Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 10:14 pm
by brian.riches
Okay, the subject heading should tell you all you need to know, but I will expand a little. The first thing is that I have now advanced sufficiently in years that I am retired. Also brain and patience seem to be getting exhausted.

Back in the day, before I discovered Open Office, I used to use the Microsoft Office suite. When it came to producing business cards at home, it was almost too easy. Word was equipped with all the necessary Avery templates. Just buy the correct Avery product, complete the template, put a sheet of the product in the printer and all was well.

Those days are gone! As has Microsoft Word. And the PCs and printers that I used to use then. And, apparently, Avery as I knew it here in the UK.

The one time that I’ve bought an Avery product for producing business cards, the whole alignment was way out. I feel totally out of my depth. As you can probably tell, I am in no way a “techie”. Time was that I happily fought my way through tomes on Excel Visual Basic, but those days have also gone despite having more time at my personal disposal.

So I feel stuck. On the face of it, producing business cards should be easy with an Avery product that leaves clean edges. But the templates don’t seem to be in Writer and finding one online has not been successful. Identifying and obtaining an appropriate Avery product seems to be considerably more difficult. Apparently the company has changed and its website is not particularly helpful. The template I used to use in Word seemed to take account of the format of the Avery product, including the header. The card dimensions seem to be difficult to establish with wording registering higher, lower, left or right. Nothing comes out of the printer the way it should. Fortunately, I quickly switched to using plain paper and comparing the results to an Avery product sheet .

Does anyone feel up to taking pity on me?

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 10:18 pm
by Villeroy
Lazy answer: File>New>Business Cards...

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 09, 2017 10:21 pm
by RoryOF
My normal method for producing business cards is to make an A4 sheet of copies of my card content, print this to a sheet of A4 220 gsm card which one of my printers will feed when it is in the humour on a straight through path, then cut the cards apart using a paper trimmer. As I only use about 10 cards a year, this is not a great burden.
 Edit: I dimension my cards to be credit card size, so they fit standard wallet slots. 

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Fri Nov 10, 2017 11:38 am
by John_Ha
Another lazy answer - try reading the Writer Manual.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:16 pm
by brian.riches
Right. Now I've got a bit further. Having contacted Avery, none of its downloadable templates will, it says, work with Open Office. The templates are designed to work with Microsoft Word of one version or another.

However, I've found templates, said to be suitable for Avery products, that are prepared by Worldlabel.com. Unfortunately, where it says that the template is suitable for use with Avery products, it says things like "same size as Avery 5371", "works with Avery 27882", "compatible with 8371". But the product codes are not the same as those used in Europe or the UK. For example, I am "looking" at a product with the code C32015-10. The "10" refers to the number of product sheets in the pack.

So now I need a cross reference from, presumably, US templates/product codes to European/UK product codes. There are small images of the template layouts and I have listed the ones that will produce 10 cards per sheet.

Not so easy referring to the Open Office Manuals and Guides, is it? Nor am I that "lazy". It was a jocular description. Should I blame the English sense of humour or the American lack of one?

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Wed Nov 22, 2017 8:30 pm
by John_Ha
Just create your own template and save it as a .odt file. You then know it will work.

See the manual and/or read Re: What to do about an Avery template that doesn't work?

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 1:09 pm
by jrkrideau
To reinforce John_Ha's approach set up a table in Write to roughly the desired size, turn on borders, print out a test copy on plain paper , adjust sizes if needed, print another test copy. Repeat if needed.


Add text, remove borders,print on the business card paper.

Save as template.

I'd send you my template but the computer HD fried itself before I did my daily back-up so I'm going to have to do it again. :(

It took me about 3 or 4 tries to get it right.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 2:50 pm
by jrkrideau
A quick thought:: A US label template will be for an 8.5 X 11 inch page as opposed to an A4 page in Europe. I'd check with World labels very carefull about page dimensions.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 6:10 pm
by keme
Which particular Avery product is it that you have?
 Edit: Forget it. Looks like all Avery sheets for business cards have the same layout. 
See if you can use the attached file. It's just a table with 2" x 3 1/2" cells, nothing fancy. Don't know the Avery layout, so it may need some adjustment. Go to page format to adjust the top margin. No other adjustment should be required.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Thu Nov 23, 2017 7:54 pm
by jrkrideau
Very nice. I'd steal it if we in North America were sensible and used A4 paper.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 2:40 am
by brian.riches
Matters have progressed to the point of recognising that is actually impossible to use Open Office Writer and Avery Quick and Clean Business Cards. I have tried every source of assistance that I can think of and nothing has worked. Part of the problem is that Avery business cards (C32011) are for use with Avery Design and Print web software. Printing designed templates requires a version of Microsoft Word. An alternative is said to be creating a PDF file. Open Office templates do not work because they are designed for the American market. That does not use A4 size paper

Having got as far as I could with Avery, I have now discovered a further problem. I have two HP printers in my network. A Deskjet 3630 and an Officejet 276dw. Both will print a sheet of templates on plain paper, but neither will print properly on the Avery card. The fonts on the print are just changed. I have sought assistance from the HP Community Forum but without a successful solution.

It seems that my overall problem is actually insoluble. :cry:

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 4:36 am
by Bill
I Googled "Avery C32011 template" and "Avery 32015 template" and found links to download .doc templates from Avery. Both templates opened in Writer with an A4 page size. I didn't have to use "Avery Design and Print web software". One of the templates has 8 cards on a page and the other has 10 cards on a page, so make sure that you choose the right one to use. While the template is described as a "Microsoft Word Template", I don't know why it shouldn't be usable in Writer.

Looking at the business card templates in Writer, the Avery A4/C2364 template appears to have the same page layout as the C32011 Avery template.

Edit: In Writer you can use File > New > Business Cards then select the Brand and Type to produce a new document with fields for Name, Tel., etc that you can fill in or use File > New > Labels then select the Brand and Type to produce a new document without the fields.

Re: Lazy user needs help for Avery business cards

Posted: Fri Jan 12, 2018 6:00 am
by MrProgrammer
brian.riches wrote:I am "looking" at a product with the code C32015-10 …
https://www.avery.co.uk/word-template-c32015
C32015.ott
(8.34 KiB) Downloaded 335 times
brian.riches wrote:Part of the problem is that Avery business cards (C32011) …
https://www.avery.co.uk/word-template-c32011
C32011.ott
(8.15 KiB) Downloaded 289 times
The hard part is finding the correct template online and getting the measurements for the elements on the sheet. But, of course, if one has the labels in hand, that problem is solved with a ruler. Building the table with Writer is done in a few minutes by setting:
• The top/left of the table with the page top/left margins
• The size (rows×columns) of the table with Table → Insert Table
• The width of the columns with Table → Table properties → Columns
• The height of the rows with Table → Autofit → Row height
• The vertical alignment of the cells with Table → Table properties → Text flow → Vertical alignment
• The horizontal alignment of the cells with Format → Styles and formatting → Table Cell → Right click → Modify → Alignment
• The font of the cells with Format → Styles and formatting → Table Cell → Right click → Modify → Font

To use this with the mail merge feature of OpenOffice you'll need to insert the appropriate fields in the table cells. Insert → Fields → Other → Database → Mail Merge Fields → {database} → {table} → {field} → Insert and Insert → Fields → Other → Database → Next record → {database} → {table} → Insert. If you don't need mail merge, just type in the desired text in the table cells. Format as desired. Save. Print.

Or use (for C32011) File → New → Labels → Label → {database} → {table} → {fields} → Brand → Avery A4 → Type → L7417 Business Card → Format → Horizontal Pitch → 9.5 → Width → 8.5 → New document.

If this solved your problem please go to your first post use the Edit button and add [Solved] to the start of the title. You can select the green checkmark icon at the same time.