How to Print Avery 5160 Labels Without Publisher (Mail Merge from Excel)

To print Avery 5160 labels without Microsoft Publisher, use Korva: start from its Address labels (Avery 5160) template, load your Excel or CSV list with Mailings › Select Data…, and choose your sheet under Mailings › Avery Labels. Korva makes a PDF with one address per label, on Mac, Windows or Linux. Print a test page on plain paper first, then print on the labels at 100% scale.

Address labels were one of the quiet jobs Publisher did every month in church offices, clubs and small businesses: the newsletter mailing, the Christmas cards, the donor thank-you letters. Publisher left Microsoft 365 on October 1, 2026, and Mac users never had it in the first place. Here is how to keep printing labels from the same list.

What you need

• Your list as an Excel .xlsx file or a .csv. Korva reads the first worksheet of an Excel file. An old .xls file needs to be saved as .xlsx or .csv first.
• Label sheets. Avery 5160, 5161 and 5163 are built in, all US Letter:

Sheet	Labels per sheet	Typical use
Avery 5160	30	Address labels
Avery 5161	20	Larger address labels
Avery 5163	10	Shipping labels

• Korva Pro. Mail merge, including labels, is part of Korva Pro, a one-time $49 purchase with a 14-day refund. The free version opens and edits .pub files and exports your first project, so you can try your old Publisher files first.

Set up your list

Give your spreadsheet a header row with columns called Name, Address and City (capital letters don’t matter). Those fill the label template’s fields directly. If your list uses other column names, such as First name and Street, you can change the fields on the label instead.

Before merging, tidy the list: remove blank rows, check postcodes haven’t lost their leading zeros in Excel, and delete anyone who has asked not to be mailed.

Print the labels

1. Start from the template. Click File › New and choose Address labels (Avery 5160) under Labels.
2. Load your list. On the Mailings tab, click Select Data… and choose your .csv or .xlsx file.
3. Check the records. With Preview ticked, every label shows the current record. Step through with the arrows next to Record 1 / N and look for anything odd, like a missing city.
4. Make the PDF. Click Avery Labels ▾ and choose Avery 5160, 5161 or 5163. Choose where to save the PDF. The status bar says how many records went onto how many sheets.
5. Test, then print. Print the first page on plain paper, hold it against a label sheet up to the light, and check the addresses sit inside the labels. Then print on the labels at 100% or Actual size, never “Fit to page”, which shrinks everything out of line.

The Avery labels help guide shows each step with screenshots.

Your own label design

You don’t have to use the plain template. Korva takes the top-left label of page 1 as the design and copies it into every label on the sheet. Put a small logo and the address block in that corner, and every label follows.

Other label sheets

Only Avery 5160, 5161 and 5163 are built in. For another sheet, such as an A4 label sheet, use a catalog merge, which repeats a box across a grid you set to the sheet’s measurements.

Mail merge for letters and certificates

The same list works for more than labels. Mailings › Mail Merge Wizard fills a letter, an invitation or a certificate with one record per copy, again as a PDF ready to print. See the mail merge guide.

Other ways to print Avery labels

• Microsoft Word has a good built-in label wizard under Mailings › Labels, with Avery product numbers, if you already have Office. It can’t open your old .pub label files, though. See Word vs Publisher.
• Avery’s own online designer works in a browser but uploads your address list to Avery’s servers, which may not suit a member or donor list.

Korva’s advantage is that the list never leaves your computer, it runs on a Mac, and the same app opens the .pub files your old labels and newsletters were made in.