Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
Creating Mailing Labels Using PowerSchool, Excel and Word
Purpose:
I have never been particularly pleased with the way mailing labels are created in PowerSchool. This document will give step-by-step instructions on how to create mailing labels using a data export from PowerSchool, transferring that data to Excel, and then importing into a Word label template. These directions may be tweaked to do other types of labels as well. Note: How to search for certain students falls out of the scope of this document. It is assumed that the user knows how to search for students.
1. Login to PowerSchool. 2. Depending on which students you wish to create labels, you may need to change to a specific school. However, for this walkthrough, I am going to keep the “School:” set at “District Office.”
3. I am going to create labels for students in the third grade. In order to do that, I select third grade.
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Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
4. For this group of students, go to the drop-down box and select “Quick Export.”
Student Names removed for security purposes.
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
5. Here you can enter in the fields to generate the labels. Since these are mailing labels, we will want the student name as well as parent names since some apartments will not deliver to the student name (even though the addresses match. So, the fields we will enter, one on each line, are as follows: first_name, last_name, mother, father, street, city, zip. Leave all other choices as defaulted. If there is a field you would like to add, but you are unsure of the field name, you can click the “FIELDS” link.
6. When you click “Submit” a file titled student.export.text should be generated and saved to your Desktop. If that file is not created, the data may appear directly in the browser. What you will then want to do is copy all that data and paste it into an Excel spreadsheet. Make sure you can open this file in Excel and check to make sure the data exported out all right. Save your file, as you need.
Student Names removed for security purposes.
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
7. Now with your data exported properly, you are ready to begin creating your labels. Open Word. In the Project Gallery (the first screen that should pop-up after opening Word), select Labels from the list on the left then click “Open.”
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
8. The only thing to worry about with this screen is that the proper label format is selected (Avery 5160 is the default label and typically used for mailing labels) and then click “Data Merge” at the bottom of the window.
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
9. After clicking “Data Merge” a “Data Merge Manager” window should appear as well as the sheet on which the labels will appear. If the “Data Merge Manager” window does NOT show up, you can open it by going to “Tools” and then select “Data Merge Manager.”
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
10.
We now need to bring our data into the label document. In the “Data
Merge Manager,” click “Get Data” and then “Open Data Source…” You will then want to choose the Excel spreadsheet with the student data.
11.
You will now layout the fields of your label. When you click “Insert Merge
Field,” you will select the field to insert into the label and where. You will notice that I put the First_Name field and the Last_Name field on the same line since that is the student name. You will notice that I was able to type “, IL “ after the <> field. Once you have placed your label fields how you want them, click “OK.”
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
12.
Now, you can edit the font and font size of your label, if you choose.
However the default should be sufficient for labels. If you want to change the font, go to “Edit” then “Select All.” Now change the font and font size.
13.
Now click “Merge to a New Document.” You labels will now be created in
a new Word document.
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180
Creating Mailing Labels with PowerSchool
14.
Your labels are now created. Make sure you load the printer properly
and print your labels. If there are spacing issues, check the type of label you are using. If the label size is not exact, you will have your labels appear as “off.”
Student Names removed for security purposes.
Created by James O’Hagan Community Consolidated School District 180