Shipping Label Maker for 4 x 6 and Half Sheet Labels

A shipping label answers three questions: who sent the parcel, where it goes and which order it belongs to. FROM sits small in the top left, as a return address does, so SHIP TO can take the middle in large bold type. The ORDER line carries the order number in a Code 128 barcode, and a FRAGILE or THIS SIDE UP line joins them when the parcel needs one.

The samples follow the style in USPS Publication 28: capitals, little or no punctuation, and the city, the two letter state and the ZIP Code together on the last line. They are placeholders in that style, with fictional names, ANYTOWN and the 12345 ZIP Code, so nothing on the page is a real address. Pasted address blocks keep the case you paste; the Capitals switch in the recipients box, on by default, sets them in capitals as USPS prefers.

The 4 x 6 in label is the common thermal shipping label, and 100 x 150 mm is the metric thermal size used outside the United States. Both print one label a page: choose the label printer PDF and each page is exactly the trim size, with no bleed, crop marks or cut line, because a label printer feeds a die cut roll.

The half sheets suit an office printer: half Letter is 8.5 x 5.5 in, two half-sheet labels on one Letter page, and half A4 is 210 x 148.5 mm, two half-sheet labels on one A4 page. The shipping label maker prints the labels touching at the middle, and the sheet PDF draws both outlines with the shared cut line at 5.5 in or 148.5 mm. Print at 100 percent, cut down that line and both halves are the right size.

A shop that ships ten parcels a day keeps its addresses in a spreadsheet or exports a CSV file from its order list. The shipping label maker reads tab separated rows from a spreadsheet and comma separated rows from a CSV file, including quoted fields with commas, doubled quotes and line breaks, so a company name with a comma stays on one line.

A header row is optional. When it is there, the columns are read by name: name, full name or recipient; company; address, address 1, address line 1 or street; address 2, address line 2, apt or suite; city or town; state, province or region; ZIP, ZIP code, postal code or postcode; country; order, order number, order no, order # or order id. Case and spacing do not matter for the column names. The pasted address blocks keep the case you paste; the Capitals switch in the recipients box, on by default, sets them in capitals as USPS prefers. Each row becomes an address block, the order numbers fill the barcode list and the print count follows the number of rows. Column names in the site’s other languages are read too, such as PLZ and Ort, Code postal and Ville, 邮编 or 郵便番号, and a CSV file saved with semicolons, as spreadsheets set to many European languages save it, is read as well.

The shipping label maker sets the order number in a compact linear barcode, Code 128, which encodes letters, digits and common symbols, so an order number can be 1001, A-1003 or SHOP-2026-14. The barcode prints its readable characters below the bars, so the number can be typed into a carrier’s page or read by eye when a scanner is not at hand.

Under the On a sheet control, Same prints one value on every label, List takes one value a line and Numbers builds a serial number from a prefix, a start value, a step and fixed digits. The label checks validate every value, report the label number that cannot be encoded, and measure each label’s quiet zone, so a longer value is caught even when it is not the one on screen.

Postage and tracking come from the carrier when the parcel is booked. The carrier issues its own label with the rate, the service and the tracking number, and that label is the one scanned along the route. The shipping label maker makes the shop’s own label: the return address, the delivery address, the order number and the handling marks that go on the parcel.

That makes the page useful in three places: a ship-from label for a parcel that already has its carrier label, a return label that sends an item back, and a brand label that puts the shop’s name and a thank you line on the box. The addresses follow the style of USPS Publication 28, the postal service’s guide to address format.

A return label is the same label with the two addresses swapped: the shop’s address takes the large SHIP TO place, and the customer’s address goes in the small FROM corner. The order number still ties the parcel to the sale, and the half sheets print two return labels at a time, which suits a batch of returns that arrive together.

For a parcel that carries the brand, the label can hold a logo, a thank you line or a color that matches the box. A matching sticker finishes the outside: the sticker sheet maker lays a sheet out for print, and the AI sticker generator draws one from a short brief. For a sheet of address labels, the address labels on a sheet page prints address blocks on a label sheet.

Print a test on plain paper first, at 100 percent or actual size, and hold it against the label or the sheet. The label printer PDF has no bleed and no cut line, so the page edge is the label edge; the half sheet PDF draws both outlines, and the line at the middle is the line to cut. If the printer shifts the half sheet page, the print settings keep a printer offset for the next sheet; the label printer PDF has no offset.

The label checks cover text outside the safe area, a barcode whose quiet zone is crowded or whose value cannot be encoded, a text box too small for its words, and a sheet whose labels fall off the page. The files are vector PDF and SVG with the text drawn as outlines, plus a 300 dpi PNG, and the design keeps its colors.