I just started printing adhesive labels with PayPal yesterday, and quickly ran into the following scenario: When using the standard shipping tool, it wants to print both the postage and instructions on the same label sheet, producing one valid postage label and one wasted label. It wasn't hard to find out how to suppress printing the instructions. A search revealed that's been covered in several posts here on the forum Doing that left me with one blank label on the sheet, which could be turned around and run through the printer again, so that the next label printed 'upside' down next to the first label. Pretty good, but a lot of work, because I had to repeat all the shipping selections, etc., for the second label before turning the sheet around in the printer, selecting Print Label, etc. That's a lot of unnecessary, repeated, tedious manual data entry when you're printing out 50 or more labels with the same shipping parameters specified! So what about the MultiOrder Shipping tool? Will it fill out both sides of a label, if 'printing instructions' is suppressed? Doesn't seem like it. The postage label is still printed, but then the paper is ejected, leaving one printed and one blank label. If you have a fast printer, it wants to feed the next sheet before would you have time to turn the paper around and re-insert it into the tray. So, even though I did 'em all the hard way yesterday, just so I could get 'em done, I've had time to think about this and propose a workaround that will let you use the MultiOrder Shipping tool to speedily print a batch of labels and use both labels on the sheet with minimal manual data entry! Here's the technique. I'll follow it with some comments on printers, and why I opted to use the one I did, given the fact that I have both an inkjet and a laser printer at my disposal. Caveat: For this to work properly, your printer settings should specify that you do not want to print the instructions. If you don't know how to do this, you can find out elsewhere on the forum. This post is already going to be long... First, decide how many labels you want to print. For this example, we'll assume that we want to print 20. Divide the number determined in the previous step by 2, and load at least that number of 2-per-sheet adhesive label sheets into the printer's feed tray. In this example, load 10 or more sheets. In the MultiOrder Shipping tool, select the 10 labels you want to print first. Complete the necessary steps to pay for and print these labels. When you print them, it will rapidly print out 10 sheets with one postage label and one blank label on each sheet, and then it will finish. Turn the printed sheets around and reload them into the printer so that the next pass will position them correctly to print on the blank labels, rather than the labels already printed. Repeat the steps necessary to pay for and print these labels. When finished, you'll have 10 complet pages of postage labels, and it'll be done far more quickly, with far less work than if you'd done them one-by-one using the manual shipping tool. I made this very easy on myself by using an inkjet printer that lets me feed from the top/back. With this printer, the printed side is always up, and it's easy to determine the path the paper takes through the printer. This makes it a no-brainer to determine how to reload the label sheets after printing the first labels. The other reason I opted for an injet over my laser printer was because I was uncertain about the effect of the heat produced by running the labels through the printer twice. Good luck -- and if anybody has a better way to accomplish this, I'd love to know about it!
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