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Product: Label printing software

Format: CD or download

Developer: BeLight Software

Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X v10.2

Review Computer: 800MHz 15" iMac, 256MB RAM, GeForce 2 MX, Mac OS X v10.3.5

Retail Price: $29.95 (download), $38.95 (CD)

Availability: Out now

Version Reviewed: 1.4

There are five words that strike terror into the heart of anyone who uses a computer: "We need to print addresses." For some reason, we have vast networks of artificial brains ready to deliver high-resolution composites of photographs taken by interstellar spacecraft, yet we can't get our damn wedding invitations out without five wasted sheets of landscape when we specifically told it portrait.

Hopping into the fray to help us is Mail Factory, a piece of software from BeLight that can make printing labels simple, once you learn how to format your lists for the software.

To begin with, Mail Factory does a great job of leading you through the process of creating your label. After launching the program, you're presented with an extensive list of templates representing most of the major manufacturers (Avery, APLI, Xerox, and others) in their most popular styles. If you can't find the type of label you have using its search function, you can create your own custom, blank template.

Next, Mail Factory asks you to select your data source. It recognizes the Apple Address Book, Entourage, Eudora, vCards, Now Contacts, a delimited text file or Excel (which will be converted into delimited text), among other types (the latest version adds support for FileMaker and pasting addresses). Mail Factory will then attempt to convert your information into something it can use, and this was where I started to run into problems.

Mail Factory does a good job of guessing what your data is. If your list contains fields called "City" or "First Name," it will automatically assume what these will represent in its label file. You can, of course, change these if you wish and also assign any fields it doesn't recognize if you need to.

The problem, though, is that Mail Factory only has a certain number of fields available. For example, Mail Factory only recognizes one "address" field, which gave me difficulty when using a database that had three address fields available for each address (used for a street address, department name, and internal department box). True, Mail Factory has three custom fields available, but I also needed to print a membership number and a renewal date: I'm out of luck.

Mail Factory does recognize three kinds of addresses: home, work, and "other," but you can only draw data from one of these sources per label, meaning if you assign data to a "work" field, you can't use it if you tell Mail Factory to use the "home" data for the label.

But keep in mind that this is only a problem if you have databases with a large number of fields. If you're dealing with a more standard set of data, Mail Factory will help streamline your printing process.

Okay, so you've got your data assigned, now it's time to design your label. MF will give you a representation of what your label will look like, and you can click through your address book, checking the layout of each one (to make
sure that nothing runs off the edge). You can customize the look of your labels by changing the alignment, font face, size and the like, or by adding graphics using the clip art library provided.

Once you're ready to print, Mail Factory really shines by giving you an oversized preview window, showing exactly what your labels will look like. You can even magnify the window to see a WYSIWIG representation of the file, along
with the number of pages.

All in all, I found Mail Factory to be a good piece of software for simplifying the printing of addresses. However, those used to using MS Office's "mail merge" function will have to learn a new, perhaps more straightforward way of doing things, and users with complicated databases may find this too simple for their needs.

Bill's been using Macs since the late 80s. When he's not making smartass remarks to amuse Kirk Hiner, he enjoys fighting for the user.