dalavancloud/envelope

python script to generate envelopes

Background

I recently had occasion to print a bunch of envelopes with different addresses.

I found that the standard word-processing software included with Windows or Mac OS didn't support automating that, while the more complex freely-available software (Abiword, LibreOffice) had maddeningly complicated and buggy implementations of mail merge.

I eventually, after 10 misprints and 3 do-overs, coaxed LibreOffice into generating a PDF that I then printed with another program (the combination of LibreOffice's conception of print settings and the actual print settings caused many hilariously wrong misprints when attempting to print from LibreOffice directly). I proudly showed these to my wife, who then pointed out that in my last reprent I somehow managed to swap the last two lines of every address.

And so, tasked with going through that ordeal again, it suddenly hit me: it's not hard to generate a PDF with some text.

The Code

The code is shorter than this README, but briefly:

1. Create a CSV with the data you want, like one address per row with one line per column. (We used Google Docs, which can export CSV.)
2. Modify the constants in the __main__ block of the code.
3. Run it, print the PDF using whatever PDF program you like.