Microsoft Word is perhaps the first thing people think of when they need to print mailing labels on standard Avery labels. But what about Mac OS X users who don't have Office installed? Surely there has to be an easy way to print simple mailing labels without purchasing extra software.

My immediate thought was that Pages could do it - it is, after all, a page-layout program. But there doesn't seem to be a built-in template for mailing labels, nor did any related web searches turn up helpful tip for using Pages in this manner.

This capability exists, but within an application you probably wouldn't initially think of - Address Book. "Ah, that makes perfect sense!", you're probably now thinking. It does make sense, but I never considered it until someone told me.

Address Book is a database of contacts and addresses, so what better application to handle the printing of mailing labels?

Just click on any one person or group, then go to File > Print.

Choose Mailing Labels from the Style drop-down. You can then decide what type of label you'd like to use under the Layout tab.

Drawbacks

There's one drawback to using Address Book over Microsoft Word. In Address Book, you can't adjust the labels before they're printed. For example, sometimes I like to adjust the spacing between lines in the address block. In Word, you can go into each label and adjust the leading, kerning, etc. With Address Book, what you see is what you get.