Getting started with LabelyPrint

1. Installation

Download the installer from the download page. Click Next → Next → Finish. The app installs into C:\Program Files\LabelyPrint and drops a shortcut on your desktop.

First launch is production-ready right away — no registration, no e-mail confirmation. For 14 days the full version runs free of charge.

For enterprise deployment we offer an MSI package with silent install (parameters /quiet /norestart). Write to us and we'll send details including the code-signing certificate.

2. Your first label in five minutes

This walk-through takes you from launching the Designer to a printed label. If something doesn't work on the first try nothing bad happens — everything can be undone with Ctrl+Z.

1. Start LabelyPrint Designer. Right after launch the New label dialog opens — see the next section for how to fill it in.
2. After confirming the dialog you'll see an empty canvas at the chosen size. Left side has the tool palette (Text, Barcode, Image, Shape), the middle has the canvas with rulers, and the right side shows the property panel for the selected element.
3. Click Text in the palette. Click on the canvas and type your content. Double-click any text to edit it later.
4. Click Barcode in the palette. Drag on the canvas to draw a rectangle — a code appears inside it. In the right panel pick the code type (e.g. Code 128) and enter the data (e.g. 1234567890).
5. Save the template with Ctrl+S as a .lpx file. The same template can be opened in the Designer, in the Print Station, and on Android.
6. Print: Ctrl+P (or File → Print), pick a printer and the number of copies.

3. "New label" dialog — what to fill in where

This dialog opens every time you start the Designer or choose File → New. You fill in the label properties before you start designing so the app can set the exact dimensions, grid and resolution to match your printer.

What each field means

Name

Label name, e.g. Warehouse label 60×40. Used only by you for orientation in the Print Station; it does not appear on the printed output.

Printer

Pick the printer you'll normally print this label on. Important: DPI (resolution) is auto-detected from the printer and populated in the field below. The Print Station remembers the printer and pre-selects it next time.

DPI

Printer resolution in dots per inch. Thermal Zebras are typically 203, 300 or 600 dpi. Office lasers are usually 600 dpi. Leave the value as auto-detected — the driver-reported number is right. Change it manually only when designing a template "without a printer" and you know its target upfront.

Width / Height (mm)

Label dimensions in millimetres. Measure your actual label with a ruler — even a 2 mm difference is visible.

Units

Switches rulers and numeric fields between mm and inches. We recommend mm — it's the label-printing standard in Central Europe.

Sheet print (optional)

Tick this if you print on A4 sheets with pre-cut label positions (typically Avery) rather than a thermal roll. Set the number of columns/rows and gaps, LabelyPrint tiles labels across the sheet automatically at print time.

Print border

A thin black outline around the label. Useful for plain-paper printing (precise cutting). Leave off for thermal labels.

After clicking Create, a new empty label opens with the chosen parameters and you can start designing. If you cancel the dialog, a default blank 100×50 mm label opens — you can start working on it and tweak the size later.

4. Barcodes

Pick the Barcode tool from the left palette and drag to outline it. In the property panel on the right you then set:

• Type — EAN-13 for retail price tags, Code 128 or GS1-128 for manufacturing, QR Code or DataMatrix for mobile scanning.
• Data — what the code encodes. For EAN-13 the first 12 digits are enough; the engine appends the check digit. Same for the FNC1 control character in GS1.
• Human-readable text — checkbox controlling whether the plain-text version appears below the bars.

GS1-128 — practical example: type the application identifiers in the natural form (01)09506000134352(17)260101 and the engine inserts FNC1 separators and computes the GTIN check digit for you. You don't need to understand how it works internally.

QR codes: level M is fine most of the time. When printing on rough surfaces or at small sizes (under 15 mm) bump the correction level to Q or H — the code will tolerate more damage.

5. Serial numbers & counter

When you need to print 200 labels, each with a different serial number — SN-00001, SN-00002, … SN-00200 — that's what the counter is for. You configure it as one of the data sources on a text element via the Data source dialog. A counter can be combined with other sources (static text, an Excel column, a prompt-field value) into one output string.

Step-by-step

1. Place a text element on the label where the serial number should appear.
2. In the property panel on the right open the Data source dialog (the icon next to the Content field).
3. In the left column click the + Counter button. A new "Counter #1" segment appears in the list below.
4. In the right column set the counter parameters (see below) and confirm with OK.
5. When printing you set the number of copies — each label gets a different value, the counter advances automatically.

What each field means

Initial value

Value from which the counter starts on the first print (or after a reset). Usually 1.

Current value

The value that will appear on the next printed label. After each print it advances (or decreases) by the step. If you need to continue from an earlier batch, edit this manually — e.g. 247 to continue after label 246.

Increment / Decrement

Direction of change. Usually Increment. Decrement helps when counting down pallet units left or numbering top-to-bottom.

Method

How the value is interpreted. Automatic (letters/numbers) detects based on content — numbers count numerically, letters shift through the alphabet. For special cases you can force numeric-only or letters-only.

Letters

Only active in the letter mode. Pick the set: A–Z (uppercase), a–z (lowercase), or extended sets including diacritics.

Step

By how much the value changes between labels. Default 1. Use 10, 100… for coarse counting. For pairs of labels (e.g. left/right) you can set 0.5 combined with rounding.

Reset limit

Optional upper bound. When the counter reaches this value the next label restarts at Initial value. Useful for cycles within a batch (e.g. a 24-pack → reset back to 1).

Preserve width

Left-pads the value with zeros (for numbers) or leading characters (for letters) to a fixed width. The number 7 at width 5 prints as 00007.

Prefix / Suffix

Fixed text before and after the value. Typically SN-, LOT-, 2026/W23/ as prefix; suffix for variant marks (-A, -B) or units ( pcs).

Preview sequence…

Opens a window showing the first N values the counter will emit — ideal for a sanity check before a large print run.

Transformations

Optional post-processing on the value: Suppress (hide characters under a condition), Compress (strip whitespace / zeros), Character filter (allow only a specific set), Slice (substring). Most day-to-day counters don't need any of these.

Output preview

The bottom bar of the dialog shows the final output for the current settings. Tweak values until you see exactly what you want.

Concrete examples

• Product serial numbers: prefix SN-, step 1, preserve width 6 → SN-000001, SN-000002…
• Weekly pallets: prefix 2026/W23/, step 1, width 4 → 2026/W23/0001, 2026/W23/0002…
• Bare ordinal, no prefix: prefix empty, step 1, no padding → 1, 2, 3…
• By tens: step 10 → 10, 20, 30… For numbering pallet corners or containers.
• Cyclic numbering in packs of 24: initial 1, step 1, reset limit 24 → 1, 2, … 24, 1, 2, …

The counter remembers its Current value between print jobs — if you print labels 1–200 today, the next batch continues at 201. To reset the counter, open the dialog and overwrite Current value back to the initial one.

6. Bulk print from Excel

The Pro edition can read data from Excel, CSV or a SQL database. The principle: you map each text field on the label to a column from the table and LabelyPrint prints as many labels as there are rows (or filtered rows).

1. Open Data → Connect data source. Pick a file (.xlsx, .csv) or enter a SQL connection string via the wizard.
2. The app loads the columns and shows a preview of a few rows for verification.
3. Click a text element on the label and in its property panel next to Content pick Data field → [column name].
4. The canvas immediately shows the value from the first row — you see what a real label will look like.
5. Open Preview data and skim the rows to make sure everything is right. You can filter — only the selected rows are printed.
6. Ctrl+P → confirm the printer → one label per row.

Practical tip: name your Excel columns exactly as what you want on the label. Instead of col_1 use Batch so orientation in the Designer is instant.

7. Printing on Zebra thermal printers

If you have a thermal or thermal-transfer Zebra printer, LabelyPrint detects it, rasterises the label at the printer's native resolution and sends it straight to the firmware over USB or TCP/IP. The result is sharp and pixel-accurate — no halftone dithering from the Windows driver.

1. In the Print dialog pick your Zebra — either USB (via the Windows print queue) or TCP/IP with an IP address and port (typically 9100).
2. Choose the number of copies and hit Print.

Watch the DPI: the printer's resolution must match the value in the template. If your template is designed for 203 dpi but you print on a 300 dpi printer, the label comes out one third smaller. DPI is set when the label is created in the New label dialog, or later in the property panel (after deselecting all elements).

8. Print Station

The Print Station is the second app in the package. It launches separately and is intended for the operator at the printer. It has no editor, so a template cannot be accidentally broken — the operator only picks a prepared template, fills in variable fields, and clicks Print.

1. On the first launch open Settings and pick the templates folder (e.g. a network drive where you export .lpx from the Designer).
2. The station shows all templates from the folder as tiles. The operator clicks one.
3. The print screen opens: a form with the fields to fill in on the left (e.g. batch, date), a live label preview on the right.
4. The operator types values (or scans them with a barcode reader — the reader acts as a keyboard on Windows, so it just works), picks the number of copies and clicks Print.

9. Licence activation

After ordering we send you a licence key in the form OL-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX. There are two paths — online (default, one click) and offline (fallback for air-gapped machines). At runtime the app never phones home either way.

Online activation (default)

1. In the Designer open Help → Licence….
2. Enter your licence key and the e-mail the licence was issued to, then click Activate online. The app contacts the licence portal, receives a signed token, installs it and switches to activated state. Done.

Offline activation (for PCs without internet)

1. In the same Licence dialog, enter the licence key and click Create activation request. A .req file containing your hardware fingerprint is saved.
2. Move the .req file to a machine with internet (USB, e-mail), sign in to the customer portal and upload it. The portal generates a .lic token file ready to download.
3. Move the .lic file back to the target PC. In the Licence dialog click Import token and pick it. Done, the software is activated.

When you switch PCs, repeat the process from the new machine (online in one click, or the offline three-step path). The old record is automatically marked as replaced — the number of active PCs does not grow, no new activation fee.