Guide to Printing Address Labels for your eBay Orders

Mark Dagher · Jan 22, 2017

psxgamer said: ↑

After all the info and help I got on TWF it's about time to make a small contribution. Here's my guide:

(My apologies for the English spelling, but English is not my mothertongue)

PRINTING ADDRESS LABELS FOR YOUR EBAY BUSINESS: A STEP BY STEP GUIDE

First of all I want to point out I'm not selling on Ebay UK, but it should work for all Ebaysites. It's possible you can also use it for Amazon and other sites.

How much does it cost?
Free

What do you need?

Selling Manager Pro (it might work with the normal selling manager)

Ms Word & Ms Excel

A printer to print out labels e.g. a Dymo Label Writer

The different steps

Download your sales history

Getting the addresses out the sales history and give them the right formatting

Prepare the labels

Do the mailmerge

Print your labels

You'll have to prepare these steps once. Afterwards when repeating it, it only takes 2 minutes.

1. Downloading your sales history

First of all you mark all the items that have been paid for as payment received. If the item has been paid with PayPal it will automatically have been marked as payment received.

Once you've marked them as paid for, on the left you click on the link "awaiting postage". This brings up a list of all items that need to be shipped. Click on the checkbox on top to activate all checkboxes. At the top you have a button "Other Action". Click it and choose for download. This should direct you to a new page where you can download your sales history.

It doesn't matter where you save this file. Since you'll often use it, I'd suggest to save it on your desktop. Just always save it on the same place and give it the same name, else it won't work afterwards

The file you download is a csv-file containing all addresses. You can open this in Excel and it will be the basis for the mailmerge you'll do afterwards.

2. Getting the addresses out of the sales history and giving them the right formatting.

When opening the csv-file in Excel you'll notice it doesn't only contain the names and addresses but also a whole bunch of rubbish you won't need. To make it a bit easier you create a second Excelfile.

I've attached the file "Adresses.xls" to help you started. The first page contains the formulas I've used. I've added a second sheet which shows the the result of the formulas.

What have we done:
* We used a few formulas to get the date as name, address, ... out of the sales history
* We used a formula to change the text into capitals to make sure everything looks the same.
* I expect to never have more than 50 orders a day, so I dragged these formula's up to row 50.

If done correctly the address should show as

JOHN SMIT - STREETLANE 1 - 2000 ANTWERP - BELGIUM

These are the actual address that will be printed on the labels.

Save this file. I would again advice to save it on your desktop. Just as the other file you always have to save it on the same place and give it the same name.

3. Prepare the labels

For this you'll need MS Word. Word contains a function to create labels, however were not gonna use it.

You can buy labels in all dimensions you want. You can find them cheap on Ebay. Decide which dimension you want to use. Mine are about 5 cm X 10 cm.

So what you do is in the page setting change the size of your Worddocument giving it exactly the same size as the labels you're using. Print it landscape and set the margins on zero (make sure you've set your label printer as standard printer before you do this). When confirming this you normally get the message that some of the margins are outside of the printable area. Click the repair button, to fix this.
.
By this you create a page of the same size as your labels, ready to do the mailmerge.

4. Do the mailmerge

In the meantime you have an Excelfile containing all the address you need to print + a Worddocument = your label. To print the addresses you need to do a mail merge. Just google it if you don't know how to do it. I've added the file "Labels.xml" as an example.

So what you actually do is link you Worddocument with you Exceladdressfile. Afterwards you add the mergefields you need to the Worddocument. I've chosen a big type of label. This allows me to also add my shoplogo and there's enough place for a returnaddress.

When a customer buys several items you only need one label. You can solve this easily. In the ribbon you find the option "Rules" (don't know if it's the right name for it in English). There you find the rule "Skip record if". I've set it on ship record if the street + number is empty. The empty you fill out by typing ""

Before actually doing the mailmerge you save this Worddocument.

5. Printing the labels

The last thing you have to do is actually do the mail merge. Don't merge them directly to your printer. You have the option to merge them to your screen. Do it and take a look see if everyhing's fine. You can make a correction if necessary. And then all you need to do is print them.

Conclusion

Does this sound complicated and time consuming? Think again. You once take the time to create the Word and Excel files. Afterwards you can use them over and over again. So the next time you need the labels the only thing you need to do is:

* donwload your sales history, overwriting the previous sales history
* Open the Worddocument containing the label and do the mailmerge
* Print out the labels
* Mark the items as dispatched

Depending on the number of orders this is only takes a couple of minutes.

Some final words

The documents I attached are just for guidance. I'm not from the UK. We write our address in a completely different way. So your Excelfile will probably look a bit different.

You actually need some knowledge of Word and Excel. I've been teaching MS Office for about ten years. The Excelformulas are very easy for me, but I know it can be very complicated for you.

After downloading the sales history, you may need to open the Excelfile to update the addresses.

This is just a general guide to give you an idea how to do it. Writing everyting in details would make it too complicated.

I'm just using this method shortly. For me it works perfectly. Instead of writing everyting by hand I can now create all the labels I need in 2 minutes.
Click to expand...

Hi Im not quite understanding how this is done sorry but im quite a newbie when it comes to excel. I just dont understand how its done.
Help would be greatly appreciated.

psxgamer · Jan 22, 2017

Sorry, can no longer help. I no longer sell on Ebay. Don't even know if the Ebayfile you can download is still the same.

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Guide to Printing Address Labels for your eBay Orders

Mark Dagher

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Guide to Printing Address Labels for your eBay Orders

Mark Dagher

psxgamer

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