Crystal Reports 9 and Avery Mailing Label Tricks

I recently had to design some Mailing Label reports, and of course, needed to use a Label format which Crystal had no listing for, Avery 7159.

After searching the BusinessObjects web site I found only the one link here, explaining how to add items to the drop down list of Label Formats, but I wasn't expecting to have to edit a text file called Labels.txt! The article is old (relating to Crystal 7, and no mention of Windows XP), and even when I found the text file, added my label (after converting all my label measurements to pica's, it still would not show up in the listing. I then renamed the text file to something else, and Crystal 9 still continued to include the standard set of labels - thanks KB article for wasting my time.

I ended up typing in the dimensions of the label, spacing etc, and no doubt will need to do this every time I write a new report.

If you ever need to adjust the Label spacing, size, borders etc, after initially creating the report, here's how (I had a hard time working this out):

Change the dimensions of the mailing label through the Layout tab of the Section Expert.

Report > Section Expert > Details > Layout tab (The Layout tab is only available when the Details section is highlighted in the Section Expert.)

You need to do this because the Mailing Label Report Creation Wizard dialog box cannot be re-entered, which means it is not possible to modify the 'Mailing Label Type' of the report any other way.

You can also adjust the Page margins in the usual manner, File > Page Setup.