Settings for Continuous Feed Label 4013
If your (continuous-feed) label printer supports it (tested okay on a Zebra TLP 2844-Z and Intermec PM43 printer), you can in principle print Word documents to it, containing even images (printed in black and white) and/or barcodes. This allows you to create a label-sized Word template to print record data to. You can use it as an ad hoc template or have it set up as an output format like any other predefined output format for a normal Word template.
For printing from within Word it's important that your template page size matches the label page size as set up in the printer's printing preferences, as well as the page's orientation in both configurations. If those don't match, Word will prevent you from laying out your continuous-feed label template as you like: it will automatically change margins and such and will generate several warnings about non-matching page sizes and margins when you actually try printing to such a template. No problem you'd think, but there's a snag: there's a longstanding issue which prevents you from printing from within Word in the printer's portrait mode (horizontally printed text) when the labels are wider than they are high (as the labels in the image below) and likewise prevents you from printing in the printer's landscap mode (text printed sideways) when the labels are taller than they are wide.
When designing your continuous-feed label template you'll find that when you set the page height to match the label's height and the page width to match the label's width, Word automatically adjusts the setting of the page's orientation to landscape if the label is wider than it is high or to portrait if the label is taller than it is wide: so Word is talking about the page's orientation. Your printer however, appears to interpret its orientation setting as pertaining to the text on the label (no matter the height and width of the label), where portrait means horizontally printed text and landscape sideways printed text. During the design phase and during printing this causes problems because Word expects the printer's orientation to mean the same thing as its own page orientation. And thus Word finds that the height, width and margins don't match and won't allow you to lay out your template as you'd like to and/or it generates several warnings and prints data and text in the wrong place on the label.
Luckily there's a work-around, but as work-arounds go it's a slightly awkward one...
For labels that are wider than they are high, whilst you'd like to print horizontally to them, the solution is that in the printer's Printing preferences (Control panel > Devices and printers, right-click your label printer and select Printing preferences) you change the height of the label to a value somewhat bigger than the width. So if the Width on the Options tab is 10.2 cm, you change the Height to something like 10.5 cm and leave the Width and portrait setting as they are. The point is that this will allows us to create a Word template in portrait orientation as well, while still being able to print horizontally and have matching page dimensions. By the way: the page size you set here in the Printing preferences doesn't seem to have any negative impact on other printing actions to this printer (as far as our testing showed), so there should be no harm in these adjustments and otherwise you can always (temporarily) restore the page height to its original setting.
The barcodes generated by Collections are actually generated as images, which means that dithering applies and dithering can make it hard for scanners to scan the barcode properly. Therefore you must switch dithering off in the printer preferences. On the Dithering tab, set the Dithering type to None. This ensures the cleanest print of the black and white lines.
In principle, the idea is that you create a normal .docx template with a page size that matches the actual label size that your printer uses (as should have been set up properly in the printer's Printing preferences). Only when the issue described in the paragraphs above applies to your situation and you've fixed it by adjusting the label height in the Printing preferences, you must create a .docx template with a page size that matches the label size as set up in the printer's Printing preferences, regardless the actual size of the physical labels.
So match the page size of your .docx template to the size of the Printing preferences page Width and Height: in Word go to Size > More paper sizes in the Layout ribbon and on the Paper tab set the Page size to Custom size and change the Width and Height accordingly. On the Margins tab you'll see that the Orientation is now Portrait, as we wanted it to be. You can change the margins to your liking.
You can fill your template normally with field references, fixed text, a logo maybe, a table cell with an image reference and/or a barcode field reference as described in the previous topics. Use a <<[PageBreak]>> parameter to make sure that each record will be printed on a separate label. Of course, do remember that the physical labels are not as tall as your current template would suggest, so only fill the upper part of your template with field references and any other content: you don't want the contents to spill over to the next printed label. The vertical ruler on the left gives an indication of the vertical space your field references occupy.
When "printing" to this template from within Collections, the resulting Word document will first be opened in Word where you can still edit it if necessary. Actual printing to the printer must be done from within Word, in which case you must of course select your label printer to print to, otherwise your printout will go to the default printer.
Source: http://documentation.axiell.com/alm/collections/old/en/ac_idcreatingcontfeedlabel.html
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