Adjust the cell margins in a label template

Question

I am using a label template for Avery 5164 labels in Word. It creates the blank labels for me (6 per page). The labels I have are preprinted with our company header/footer on them. I want to change the portion of each label where I can add text, so I then go to Table Layout>Cell Margins and adjust the margins. Changing the Cell Margins changes the SIZE of each label and I end up with 4 labels on page 1 and 2 labels on page 2??? What am I doing wrong? Thanks.

Answer 1

In previous versions of Office, creating a table for labels from the Mailings > Label dialog automatically made adjustments to the document's layout settings to accommodate the format's special quirks. I don't recall when it changed, but those adjustments are no longer automatic. After creating a document for Avery 5164 labels, the last row of cells is already on a second page; that isn't something you caused by adjusting the cell margins. To fix it:

1. Turn on display of nonprinting characters (including the paragraph marks) by clicking the ¶ button on the Home ribbon.
2. Click the little arrow in the bottom right corner of the Page Setup group on the Layout ribbon, and click the Layout tab in the resulting dialog. (Note: don't change anything on the Margins tab of the dialog.)
3. Under the "Headers and footers" heading in the dialog, change the From Edge settings for the header and footer from the default 0.5" to 0.25" (in metric, change from 1.27 cm to 0.63 cm). When you click OK, Word may complain that the margins are too small; carefully click the Ignore button instead of the default Fix button.
4. When you click OK in the dialog, the last row of the table moves to the first page. But there's still a second page that contains only a single empty paragraph mark in the text area below the header. That mark can't be deleted (it's part of the table), but to get rid of the second page you can select the paragraph mark and set it to a font size of 1 pt.
5. Now you can select the whole table, click the Cell Margins button on the Table Layout ribbon, and change the top cell margin to whatever size is needed to avoid the company logo.