In under 10 minutes, we’ll get you printing hundreds of labels. Let’s say that you’ve got a spreadsheet of data, for this example it will be an inventory file where we will make a 2” by 1” label with a barcode.
Creating a template
Everything starts with a template. What you see on the label design will get printed. Each row in your spreadsheet will print a label. This is done in what’s called batch generation.
You can do this all for free with a temporary guest account, any templates and anything you generate will be deleted after 24 hours. If you sign up with an email address, then you get up to 1,000 labels free.
Create a new template, give it a name, if you are using a thermal label printer you would select single label. If you have an Avery style sheet of labels, select that. For this example we select a single label design, and set the size to 2
Design your label
Our first element is a barcode. We’ll drag that onto the canvas and leave the barcode type at Code 128. Now the most important step is to map that barcode to data. This is what makes the tool so powerful and allows you to use spreadsheet data to create hundreds of labels at once.
Connect your data
Click the data source and change that to “map to data field” then give this a field name of “sku” to match our inventory spreadsheet. Below that we will add additional text fields for the name, size, and color.
Generate a test label first before batch printing
When all fields are created and mapped, we can save our template. Once saved, we can preview our label with data by clicking on preview. You can save this data so you don’t have to keep entering it by clicking “save as preset”.
Once you’ve entered data click generate preview. A preview will not apply any data transformations, or value lookups. These are more complex logic that your can add to your template if you are trying to integrate with an API or have source data that you don't want to edit.
If your preview looks right and you’re satisfied with how everything looks, proceed to generating a batch where you can now make hundreds of labels from your spreadsheet.
Running a batch
When you batch generate, you can receive a single PDF file for printing all at once, or individual PDF files of each row of data with a field name from your spreadsheet as the filename for saving later and reusing. You can choose either one depending on your use case.
Generate your own data
If you don’t have a list of SKUs yet this is where you could use the sequence generator to create random ones, set a prefix like “shirt” useful for asset tags, or make your own custom sequence by setting a prefix and leading zeros.
Process your batch
Click on generate batch and your labels will start processing. You’ll see an in app notification once complete. You can also set the app to notify you via email, or even a webhook if you are a developer who wants to create these labels via api.
Once complete you can view the batch history to see past batches to download them. If you generated your own data, be sure to download the spreadsheet as well, so you can use that yourself as a reference of your apparel SKUs.
Printing your labels
Once you’ve downloaded your PDF print it to your thermal printer of choice or your sheet of labels. Always print at 100% and at actual size for best results to match your design. I advise against using fit to page or scale to fit as those can result in misalignment. Test a single page print from your batch first when doing larger files.
I like to print from my previews first before a batch and then edit my label template rather than creating a large batch first. For best results with QR codes and other scannable elements use a label printer that prints at 300 DPI.
Use your printed labels
You’ve successfully printed hundreds of custom labels with barcodes from your spreadsheet and used them. Pair them with a usb or bluetooth barcode scanner to enter data automatically into a spreadsheet or other system.
You can do all of this for free at bulkpdflabels.com for up to one thousand labels by signing up with your email, no credit card is required to get started. Or if you only have a few labels to generate, use a guest account.