Admittedly, envelopes with a window are extremely practical: the address is entered directly in the letterhead and printed together with your text. Now just fold the letter, put it in an envelope, done. Unfortunately, window envelopes cannot be used for all tasks. Be it because you want to send invitation cards, for example, or because there is a current brochure in the envelope. But how does the address get on the envelope in this case? By hand or with a special address label?
That doesn’t have to be the case, because Word also prints on any envelope. The only requirement: the envelope must fit in your printer (you can find information on this in your printer manual).
The simplest form of envelope printing is to manually enter the ship-to and ship-to address and then print on a standard envelope. Word has presets for standard formats such as B4 (corresponds to an A4 sheet without folding), C6 (an A4 sheet folded four times) or DL (= DIN long, in which the A4 sheet is folded three times vertically).
To print an individual address on a single envelope, follow these steps:
- Word 2007: On the ribbon, switch to the SHIPMENTS tab and then click the ENVELOPES button in the CREATE group.
- Word 2003, 2002/XP: From the TOOLS menu, go to LETTERS AND MAIL, then ENVELOPES AND LABELS.
Word2000: From the TOOLS menu, go to ENVELOPES AND LABELS. - In the dialog box that appears, make sure you are on the ENVELOPES tab.
- Then enter the desired postal address in the RECIPIENT(ADDRESS) field.
- If you wish, also fill in the SENDER(ADDRESS) field with your own postal address. This information may also be available here. Then just check the address details. You can read how you can change your sender settings in the chapter “How to permanently change the default sender address” of this entry.
If you do not want the sender to appear on the envelope, select the OMIT (Word 2007, Word 2003 and 2002/XP) or WITHOUT (Word 2000) check box above the sender field. - Next, set the size of the envelope to be printed by clicking the OPTIONS button. On the ENVELOPE OPTIONS tab, select the appropriate format from the ENVELOPE SIZE drop-down box – e.g. B. »C5« (double fold of an A4 page). A preview graphic shows where the sender and recipient addresses appear.
- If you do not agree with the positioning, you can set the distances FROM THE LEFT and FROM ABOVE manually – each separately for RECIPIENT’S ADDRESS and SEND ADDRESS.
You can also let Word do the best positioning: Type AUTO instead of a number in all text boxes with centimeters. In this case, Word uses internal default values that are tailored to the selected envelope format. - Be sure to check the settings on the »Print Options« tab now. Envelope printing problems are often caused by incorrect paper orientation or paper feeding.
If the RESET button is grayed out, the printer – more specifically the installed printer driver – is set to its default settings. Small thumbnails show how to insert the envelope into the printer slot. In most cases, the default settings are best for your printer. Conversely, this means: If the DEFAULT or RESET button is active, it is recommended to click it to restore the printer’s factory settings.
Changing the print options only makes sense if you want to feed envelopes from a different tray or if your printer supports multiple types of paper handling.
- After you have confirmed the envelope and print options with OK, start the printing process by clicking on the PRINT button.
Alternatively, the ADD TO DOCUMENT button is available, which prepends a new page with the cover information to the current Word text. To preserve the page format and the positions of the address fields, Word inserts a section break between the cover page and the existing document. This procedure is suitable if you want to print out the envelope and the text of the letter together. But then make sure that the right type of paper is inserted in the printer tray – especially if your printer only has one tray!
Regardless of whether you print the envelope immediately or first add it to the document: If you made changes to the return address in step 4, Word will ask you whether you want to save a new default return address. Feel free to click YES and you won’t have to re-enter your own address every time you print an envelope.
