LabelWizPro for Sesame 2.0 Setup

These are instructions for setting up LabelWizPro for Sesame 2.0 or later, plus a tutorial on using it. For instructions on using LabelWiz to create/design mailing labels for use with your Sesame applications, click the Design Help button on the LabelWiz form.

What's new in LabelWizPro?
So many new features have been added to enhance label design and functionality that we changed the name to LabelWizPro. Here's a brief rundown of what's new:
  • LabelWizPro takes advantage of Sesame 2.0's powerful XResultSet technology to print labels. Records don't show on screen like a running mass update. Instead, they're and printed transparently in the background. Printing Queued labels, and optionally automatically un-queuing them, is now easier and faster.
     
  • Each label line can now be individually fonted (any font in your system), sized (from 6 to 40 points), styled (bold, italic, all caps, underline or any combination), aligned (left, right or center), custom-spaced and colored, giving you more control over the appearance of your labels and supporting highly sophisticated label designs. Now even complex and colorful name tags and conference badges can be designed and printed with LabelWiz.
     
  • You can now add decorative graphic lines to your labels in virtually any position and thickness.
     
  • New options make it easier to have LabelWiz close up empty lines and spaces.
     
  • Three new options have been added to deal with lines that are too long to fit the label width. Auto-Downsize reduces the font size of the line until it fits. Auto-Truncate truncates the line to fit. Auto-Prompt lets you edit the long line, on-the-fly, so you can change a lengthy line like Manager, Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance Section to something shorter as your labels are being printed.
     
  • There's a new Shift Image Right control on the Options tab you can use to move an image to the right. This lets you, for example, vertically center the image on the label or slide it all the way over to the right.
     
  • More barcoding options have been added. For PostNet barcoding, the ZIPCode field doesn't have to be the last merge field on the label. And barcodes other than PostNet are supported.
     
  • Two new tabs — Use ASCII and Use Database — have been added to the LabelWiz design screen. Use ASCII lets you print labels right from the Label Designer using most any delimited ASCII (export) file as your data source. The Use Database tab lets you sort and print labels for selected records in any database in any Sesame application by mapping the database's fields to your LabelWiz merge fields. These powerful new options mean you don't have to add the LabelWiz programming and print button to all the forms from which you want to print labels. You can optionally do all your label printing right from the same LabelWiz interface where you design your labels.
     
  • Other internal enhancements, such as a much higher positioning and printing density, provide more accuracy and sharper label text.
     
  • LabelWizPro imports your old LabelWiz label definitions and upgrades them to the new format.

 

Importing Old LabelWiz Records
If you're upgrading from the original LabelWiz to LabelWizPro, you can use the Import Old LabelWiz Records button on the Label Settings tab to import your old label definitions. After running this procedure, you'll be prompted to F10 through the imported records to upgrade them to the new LabelWizPro format.

Introduction

LabelWiz helps you quickly and easily design mailing label templates that you can link to any form in any Sesame application to print mailing and shipping labels, ID/name badges, etc. You don't have to export your data. You don't need an external program. LabelWiz does it all — from inside Sesame.

LabelWiz works with US Letter size and international A4 portrait-oriented label sheets. It's not for dedicated label devices like the DYMO, Seiko and Brother labelers. LabelWiz is a label / badge sheet printer, not an envelope printer. It comes with more than 60 predefined Avery label sheet templates.

LabelWiz is itself a Sesame application. It works by enabling any other form in any Sesame application to retrieve and load the label template you want when you're ready to print labels. LabelWiz works on demand, letting you print a label at anytime:

  • For the current record only
  • For all the records you've retrieved
  • For just the records that you've marked for label printing

You do not have to do any programming to setup and use LabelWiz.

LabelWiz has two components:

  1. The label designer where you define/design/customize your labels and can optionally print them as well.
  2. The optional label printer program you add to any form where you want to print labels.

LabelWizPro requires Sesame 2.0 or later. You can use LabelWiz as a standalone Sesame application, or merge it into one or more of your existing Sesame applications.

By merging LabelWiz with an existing application, you have immediate access to the label designer without having to close the application you're using. You simply click the Application Menu tab at the bottom of your Sesame screen, open the LabelWiz form in Add or Update mode, create or edit and save your label design changes, then click back to your open form and print your modified label.

To merge the LabelWiz application with one or more of your existing Sesame applications, follow the Merge Application instructions in the Sesame User Guide.

The advantage of using LabelWiz as a standalone application is that all your label definitions are stored in one place. This way, if you are using LabelWiz with several applications and forms, they can all have access the same set of label definitions.

In standalone mode, if you're using LabelWiz in a network environment, you can optionally password protect it so that others cannot change or add label designs. If you do this, be sure to set the X User Name and X Password (Application / Security Manager / Application Settings) as the LabelWiz printer program performs XLookups to obtain label specifications.

The LabelWizPro application file (LabelWizPro.db) is supplied with a sample Customers database and several common label designs, so you can quickly become familiar with how LabelWiz works.

When you're ready to link LabelWizPro with one of your existing Sesame applications, you can optionally Trim the LabelWiz application to remove the Customers database from it. The steps for Trimming an application are described in the Sesame User Guide. Note: You can leave the sample Customers database in the LabelWiz application. It can be useful for testing your label designs before going "live" with them. You do not have to Trim the Customers database from the application in order to use LabelWiz in any manner.

To set up LabelWiz for use, simply copy the supplied LabelWizPro files (LabelWizPro.db, LabelWizPro.dat and LabelWizProProgram.txt) into your default Sesame data folder where your other Sesame application files reside.

Test drive LabelWizPro

  1. Make sure there is some plain paper in your default printer and open the LabelWiz application.

    Note: All test printing can and should be done with plain paper. After printing a page of labels to plain paper, you can place the printed sheet behind the label sheet and hold them up to the light to confirm that the printed labels match the label sheet. See Printing Tips at the end of this section if you need to make adjustments.
     

  2. Select Search/Update / Customers / Main Form and retrieve some records. (Retrieve just a few records at first in case you accidentally run a label printing job when you didn't mean to.)
     

  3. With some records retrieved, click the Print Labels button.
     

  4. Select Print THIS record only.
     

  5. Pick a sample label definition. (three samples are supplied.)
     

  6. Tell LabelWiz which label position to print the label to.

    Note: Labels print across-the-sheet by default as shown in the left-hand graphic below. When designing a label in LabelWiz, you can specify down-the-sheet printing as shown in the right-hand graphic below.

    Print
    Across
    Sheet
    (default)    		   Print
    Down 
    Sheet
     
    1 2   1 4
    3 4 2 5
    5 6 3 6

  7. Select Default Printer.

A label for the current record should print to your default printer.

Note: To abandon a label-printing task, press ESC while any LabelWiz menu is displayed or simply click outside of the menu. To interrupt a LabelWiz printing job in progress, press Ctrl+Shift+End. This will not stop the printing of labels that have already been sent to your printer by your operating system. You should never turn a printer off while it is printing, but you may be able to pull out the printer's paper tray to prevent sheets from being fed, then turn the printer off after the last sheet has emerged. You can then delete the unfinished print job in your operating system.

Next, queue a few records for label printing by putting a checkmark in their Queue for Label checkbox.

Go through the steps above for printing, but this time select Print QUEUED records only.

When the labels have been sent to the printer, LabelWiz will ask for your OK to clear the checkboxes for all the queued label records.

Next, retrieve some different records — enough to print two sheets of labels — and sort them in some sensible manner. This time select Print ALL records in result set. This should print a label for every record in the result set.

If you have more than one printer installed in your system, you can click [Add a Printer] when the select printer menu appears. At the prompt, type the name of the printer exactly as it appears in Printer Properties in your computer. If you do not spell the printer name correctly or there is no such printer in your system, then the labels will print to your default printer. In this case, you should select [Remove a Printer] from the Print menu and remove the misspelled or non-existent printer name, then check your printer properties for the correct spelling of the alternate printer name. (In Windows XP, click Start / Printers and Faxes. Right click on the printer icon and click Properties. The first field on the General tab shows the printer name.)

If you have a printer on another computer on your network and that computer is named "Friar" and the share name for the printer is "Xerox4510," then you would use:

\\Friar\Xerox4510

Do not confuse the device's share name with the printer name. They are often different and only the share name will work when selecting an alternate printer, even if the shared printer has a name on your local computer.

You can preview the first label sheet by printing to an Acrobat PDF printer. See  Previewing to Acrobat Reader at the end of this document.

When you've familiarized yourself with how LabelWiz prints labels from the supplied Customers database, you can open the LabelWiz form in Add or Search/Update mode and familiarize yourself with the process of creating label definitions. Click the Label Design Help button at the top of the LabelWiz form for label design instructions.

Printing Tips

  1. Always test print to plain paper. Label sheets are expensive.
     
  2. Hold the printed sheet squarely behind the label sheet and hold them both up to the light to check the alignment of your layout. Slight adjustments to the layout might be necessary.
     
  3. If the labels "creep" down the sheet, decrease the label height in LableWiz a bit. If the labels creep up the sheet, increase the label height a bit. 
     
  4. If the entire sheet is slightly misaligned, adjust the top and/or left margins slightly.
     
  5. When satisfied with the layout, print onto the label sheets.

Removing the sample Customers database from LabelWiz
(Making LabelWiz a standalone application)

After you've familiarized yourself with how LabelWiz works. You can "Trim" the sample Customers database from the LabelWiz application at any time and begin using the application in standalone mode with your applications. Instructions on Trimming an application can be found in the Sesame User Guide.

Note: It's all right to leave the sample Customers database in the LabelWiz application. It can be useful for testing your label designs. You do not have to Trim the Customers database from the application in order to use LabelWiz in any mode.

Adding LabelWiz to your existing form

Two easy steps are all it takes to link LabelWiz to any form where you will want to print labels:

  1. Add a button to the form. (You can optionally add a bound Queue for Label checkbox to the form if you'll want to browse records and queue them for label printing.)
     

  2. Paste the LabelWiz program (LabelWizPro Program.txt) into the On Element Entry event of the new Print Label button.

Following are the steps in detail. Some familiarity with Sesame Designer is required. If you do not know how to use Designer to add a command button to a form, see the Sesame User Guide section on designing applications.

  1. Open the supplied LabelwizProProgram.txt file in Notepad, WordPad or Microsoft Word. It's a plain text file. With the file open, click Edit / Select All followed by Edit / Copy to copy the entire LabelWiz program to the Clipboard.
     

  2. In Sesame Designer, open the DSR file for the application you will be using to print mailing labels, or create a new DSR file from your existing application.
     

  3. In Designer, select Forms / Redesign/Customize a Form and open the form that you plan to use to print labels.
     

  4. In the Layout Editor, using the Layout Element Adder, add a Command Button to the form in a convenient location. The bottom of the form is usually best. Name the button Print Labels, or something similar, like Labels.

    Optional — "Queuing" records for label printing is the action of marking the records for which you want to eventually print a label. With queuing, you hold off printing until you're ready to print a label for all the marked records in a single batch. If you want this feature, you must add a checkbox to your form. The checkbox can be named anything you want as long as it is a bound checkbox.
     

  5. Save the Layout.
     

  6. Click Program Layout.
     

  7. In the Program Editor, select your new button by name from the Elements dropdown. Be sure that On Element Entry is selected on the Event dropdown.
     

  8. Using the Program Editor's menu bar, select Edit / Paste to paste the LabelWiz program you copied earlier into the editor.
     

  9. The first line in the program will read:

    var vLabelWizPath as String = "C:\Sesame2\Data\LabelWizPro.db"

    If you need to change the path to the LabelWiz application, simply edit the path in this variable.

    The second line in the program will read:

    var vQueueLabel as String = "Queue for Label"

    If you've added the optional bound checkbox to your form for queuing records, replace "Queue for Label" with the name of your checkbox element. This must be the layout element name, not the field name or label (though all three may be the same). If you have not added the optional bound checkbox to your form, then leave this line as it is — do not delete it.

    You should not edit anything else in the program.
     

  10. Click Test / Test Program to make sure everything is all right.
     

  11. Close the Program Editor, click Save Layout Design, then click Close Design Tab.

You can now Reconcile your Designer DSR file with your actual application DB file. See Reconciling in the Sesame User Guide if you do not know how to Reconcile a Designer file with its corresponding application file.

WARNING: Reconciling makes permanent changes to the target application. Always make a backup copy of the target application before performing a Reconcile. If you have any doubts or reservations about Reconciling, have the person who designed your application do it for you.

You are now set up to print labels from your updated form.

To design new label definitions, open the LabelWiz application and select Add Data / Labels / LabelWiz. Or, to view the sample label definitions, select Search/Update / Labels / LabelWiz. When the LabelWiz form displays, click the Label Design Help button for more information on designing labels.

Click the Label Design Help button for information on printing labels for delimited ASCII files and Sesame databases from the LabelWiz screen (as opposed to printing labels from your own form).

If you need technical assistance for LabelWiz, contact us at office@insidesesame.com or 949-722-9127. We may ask you to send us the application you are using to print labels so we can determine the cause of the problem.

Previewing to Acrobat PDF
Previewing the first page of labels before wasting paper is always a good idea. LabelWiz lets you select any available printer to print to. By default, the printer menu includes only your default printer, but you can add to the menu any printer in your system, including an Acrobat Distiller or Acrobat PDF printer if you have the full Adobe Acrobat program. A good "printer" for previewing the first page of a label print job is PDF995. For $10.00 you can download PDF995 at http://www.pdf995.com. Once you've installed it in your system, you will have a new printer named "PDF995" which you can add to your printer menu by using the [Add Printer] menu selection. You will need Acrobat Reader on your computer if you use PDF995. Adobe Reader is available free at http://www.adobe.com.