I a question about exporting Capture fixture data to labels last week on the Capture Facebook Forum. It made me remember how confusing I found using Microsoft Word Mail Merge to make fixture labels when I started.  So I thought I’d write a tutorial to help others.

We start in Capture. I’m starting in an old file I made a while ago.  Select File>Export Fixture Data. 

In the next window, name your file and select where to save it to.  You can choose from many file formats, but this is easiest with CSV.

Now we go to Excel or whatever spreadsheet software you wish.  This is literally only to sort the data by channel.  I don’t know if there is something I’m misunderstanding, but the order Capture exports in seems to be a little chaotic.  Open the CSV in Excel.  Highlight all fields by pressing the little square in the upper left of the spreadsheet. 

Now in the upper right hand corner of the Home tool bar, select Sort and Filter>Custom Sort. 

In the pop up window, there is already a line to filter from, but you need to tell Excel what category to filter from. Choose Channel, then press OK. 

Now that your CSV is in order, Save- NOT Save As- and keep the original CSV file format.

Over in Word now.  Select Mailings from the Tab bar near top. 

Weirdly, you next touch Start Mail Merge, which brings up some choices.  Choose Labels. 

You’ll choose your label size here.  I’m going to look for Avery labels by clicking where the popup says Label Products>Microsoft.   

Now select Avery from the pulldown menu, then choose the label that’s right for you.  I’m select the small 30-per-page 18260 labels.  Click OK after you choose. 

Next, go over to Select Recipients>Use an Existing List. 

Navigate to your CSV file and click Open.  A pop up opens.  I’ve not had any trouble just clicking OK here.  No changes necessary. 

Now your Word document is filled with <<Next Record>> items.  This is the message that needs to exist to tell Word to go to the next label.  It always needs to be first in each label (after the first label), and it doesn’t get printed. 

Now you go to Insert Merge Field.   

When you click that box, all the fields from Capture are there.  Select them and arrange them how you like.  This is my fast label I’m making. 

It’s helpful to add some text in each label to make it easier to read.  The same way you edit any text, I’m adding parentheses around the Channel and adding the abbreviation Addr: before the Patch information.  I also highlighted the Channel and the Parentheses to make the font bigger. 

Now, let’s check our look by touching the toggle Preview. 

Here’s my preview. 

Touch Preview again to go back to editing mode.  We’re very close now.  What we need to do is copy the work we just did into the next label WITHOUT erasing the <<Next Record>> command.  Select all your fields, copy and paste into the next label AFTER <<Next Record>>. 

Now you want to copy the second label including the <<Next Record>> field and paste them into each of the remaining labels on the page.  If it’s helpful, I use Tab to travel to each new label. Be aware that you will tab into a narrow column between labels in the same row. It should look like this when you are done. 

Looks like a mess, doesn’t it?  But when you click Preview again… 

Last thing to do is click Finish and Merge way over on the right of the toolbar. 

Once you click, you can choose between Edit Individual Documents to further finesse each label (sometimes data entries get too long and look terrible, so it’s good to check) or going directly to Print. 

That’s it for today.  Hope this was helpful to you.  Let me know if there are other Capture functions like that this you want a tutorial for and I’ll try to make it.  Make no mistake- I’m no Marco Vitale (who is the absolute best), but I’m good at fussy procedures like this.

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Mark LaPierre is a programmer in film and television based out of Albuquerque.  He grew up in live entertainment and has been a designer/programmer for musicals, concert dance, live music, circus and corporate.  Mark is a proud member of IATSE and an ETC Eos trainer.  If you enjoy his content, please consider commenting on his posts on the website to appease the Algorithm.