How to… Print postage labels for Royal Mail, ebay and Amazon
What you need: Printer (inkjet or laser); Label sheets Time required: One hour
Whether you use ebay and other online marketplaces to earn money or simply as a convenient and profitable way to clear the clutter, paying for postage and printing address labels can be a real hassle.
Here, we’ll explain how Royal Mail’s Click & Drop (C&D) service makes the entire process much easier. By integrating with your online marketplace accounts, it automatically generates labels for you as new orders come in and, depending on which service you choose, and then sends tracking information back to the buyer. You can also use it to send one-off parcels to friends and family.
You don’t need a dedicated label printer to use the service – just a standard inkjet or laser printer and some adhesive labels will do the job. Better still, for a small fee you beat the Post Office queues and get your parcels collected from your home.
1 Check your printer is properly aligned
Before you print any labels, it’s a good idea to check your printer is working properly. Most postage labels include barcodes or QR codes (sometimes both), which allow them to be scanned and tracked while in transit. If your printer’s print head isn’t aligned correctly, you may find these codes don’t print properly and therefore won’t work.
Windows does include a tool for printing a test page, but it’s only intended to check whether your printer is connected to your computer. Instead, we recommend using Print.test.page.ok, which performs a more comprehensive test – download the ZIP file at the top of the list of options at www.snipca.com/38739.
Run the tool, select ‘Print test page (1)’ from the box at the top (see screenshot below), then click Print. When the test print appears, check each line. If you spot any anomalies (such as text that appears skewed), the print head in your printer needs to be realigned.
Precisely how you do this depends on the make and model of your printer. On our old (but still working) Canon MG3150, this is done by repeatedly tapping the Maintenance button (spanner icon) on the printer until the display shows a ‘U’, then pressing the scan button (labelled Black).
The printer then produces a test page, which you place in the scanning unit before pressing the scan button a second time. It then detects any alignment errors on the scan and adjusts the print head accordingly.