Handy Label Maker for Windows

Handy Label Maker lets you create and print high-quality labels for your contacts. It prints on specialized label paper like Avery 5160 and 8160, as well as envelopes, address sheets, and more. You can import, export, and search contacts from a variety of sources, including Google, Yahoo, and other email systems. It's free to try with a 20-contact limit, but the full version costs less than ten bucks. It's a sweet deal: If all you need to do is print a few labels, Handy Label Maker can do that. They're betting you'll like being able to click a contact and print a shipping label. It's not a bad bet.

A post-installation note instructed Windows Vista, 7, and 8 users to run Handy Label Maker as an Administrator, and it even includes instructions for how to run this or any Windows program as an Admin. Handy Label Maker's gray, old school interface has five text lines for creating custom labels, as well as options such as Landscape and Portrait. According to the User Manual, we needed to either create a new contacts file or browse to an existing one. This app's hidden talent is that it also serves as a contacts manager. Contact forms include useful fields like Birthday, Category, and Notes. But we could also open contacts in a DAT file or import (and export) CSV contacts, up to our trial limit. That was enough to try Handy Label Maker's main feature -- printing labels. We selected a contact from a drop-down list, and pressed "Print Label." We chose our print options, pressed "Print," and Handy Label Maker handed the job off to our print manager and then to the printer.

Despite some initial hoops to jump through, Handy Label Maker proved a versatile, affordable tool for printing labels and keeping track of contacts.

Editors' note: This is a review of the trial version of Handy Label Maker 5.3.