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Print an envelope or label for the selected Outlook contact.

This page was prompted by a question in the Microsoft Office Answers forums from a user who wanted to be able to print an envelope or label for a selected contact in Outlook by merely clicking a button. I replied to that question with a pair of macros from which this page was developed.

Rather than ask users to attempt to reconstruct the Outlook user forms and macro code employed by this function, I have made them available for download. Extract the files from the zip. The three indicated items can then be imported into the Outlook VBA editor either from its file menu or by dragging and dropping into the project directly from Windows Explorer - see first illustration below.

The ZIP file includes sample envelope and table documents. The envelope document as shown may be edited. If the label document is not of the format you need, create a new label document (see below).

Format the envelope as required. Toggle the field display to hide the field construction (ALT+F9 - or right click the field and toggle field codes as above).

Save the changes to the envelope document (or the new envelope document) retaining the name Outlook Envelope.docx in the My Documents folder and close the document.

To create a new envelope template, open Word. Use the Envelope and Labels tool (Mailings tab in Word 2007/2010) to add an envelope to a blank document. The macro uses a document variable to place the address. Type the docvariable field into the delivery address window, as shown below, using CTRL+F9 for the brackets {} and click Add to Document

For the labels, it is not practical to edit the table. it is much simpler to create a new template. From the Envelope and Labels function create a new document from the labels tool using your preferred label format.

Save this document as Outlook Label.docx again in the My Documents folder. This label document does not require the docvariable field employed by the envelope function.

These documents are used by the function to print labels and envelopes. It would have been possible to use the Word envelope and label dialog from the function, but this method was used for speed and convenience.

The macro stores details about the layout of the label document in the registry, to which end it creates a registry entry

"HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\VB and VBA Program Settings\Outlook Envelope\Table" with two sub keys "Rows" and "Columns" . Thus the macro requires that the user has write access to the registry. This registry data is created the first time the macro is run, and is updated every time the label format on the user form is changed. The default values are 3 columns, 8 rows, so for most users this will have to be changed the first time the macro is run to match the values from the envelope document. Thereafter the information will be stored and presented on the form whenever the macro is run.

All that remains is to create a toolbar button to run the macro PrintALabel.

otherwise the main form is presented with the default option set to Envelope and the current address to be printed shown in the upper window. If the macro is added to the ribbon of the Contacts tab (easily achieved in Word 2010 with the built-in ribbon editor) the above message should never be seen.

Click this link to download the user forms and macro modules.