How to Print Avery 5160 Labels from Excel (2026 Step-by-Step Guide)

By Leo Yong · Last updated May 26, 2026 · 9 min read

You have an address list in Excel. You need it on Avery 5160 labels — the 1 by 2-5/8 inch mailing labels, 30 per sheet, U.S. Letter size. The simplest path goes through CSV: save the Excel sheet as a CSV, drop it into a labels tool, download a PDF, print. This guide walks through that path step by step, compares it to the other common methods (Word mail merge, Avery's Design & Print template), and covers the alignment quirks that bite people on the first attempt.

Method 1: Excel → CSV → UrbanKit’s CSV-to-Labels tool

This is the recommended path for one-off mailings or anything bigger than 30 labels. The tool runs entirely in your browser, so your address list never leaves your machine — useful for public-notice mailings, member rosters, or any list with privacy implications.

Step 1: Prepare your Excel sheet

Open the workbook with your address list. The tool works best when each address part lives in its own column:

• Recipient name (one column or split into First / Last)
• Street address (number, name, type — can include suite/apt suffix)
• City
• State (two-letter abbreviation is fine; full state names also work)
• ZIP (5-digit or ZIP+4; leading zeros are preserved by the tool)

If your data is in a single "full address" column instead of separate parts, the tool still works — it parses on the fly — but a few addresses with ambiguous unit identifiers may need manual review.

Step 2: Save the sheet as CSV

In Excel: File → Save As (or Save A Copy). In the file-format dropdown, pick CSV UTF-8 (Comma delimited) (.csv). The UTF-8 variant is important if any addresses include accented characters (Spanish, French, Vietnamese, Polish, Czech surnames are common in U.S. address lists); the plain "CSV (Comma delimited)" option uses the legacy Windows-1252 encoding, which mangles accented characters in the export.

Save to a folder you can find again. If Excel asks "Some features may be lost if you save in this format," click Yes — the features being lost are formula references and cell formatting, neither of which the labels tool needs.

Step 3: Open the tool and drop the CSV

Go to urbankitstudio.com/tools/csv-to-labels. Drag the CSV file from your file manager onto the upload zone, or click the area to pick the file. The tool reads the file locally; nothing is sent over the network.

You will see a preview of the first 10 rows plus a column-mapping panel. The tool tries to auto-detect each column by name (Address, City, State, ZIP, etc.); review the mapping and correct any misreads using the dropdowns. If two columns should be combined into one label line (for example, First Name + Last Name), use the manual mapping to concatenate them.

Step 4: Review duplicates

The tool automatically normalizes addresses (uppercase, trimmed whitespace, standard suffix abbreviations) and flags rows that match. Public-notice mailings against parcel datasets typically have 5 to 15 percent duplicates from joint property owners, PO box pairs, or trustee/individual splits on a deed.

The dedupe panel shows each cluster with an Accept First / Accept All / Reject controls. Accept First is the default and right for almost all mailing-list use cases. Reject All preserves duplicates if you need one label per legal record rather than one per physical mailbox — rare but sometimes required by regulation.

Step 5: Generate and print the PDF

Click Generate PDF. The output is exactly sized for Avery 5160: U.S. Letter (8.5 by 11 inch), 1 inch top and bottom margin, 0.1875 inch left and right margin, 3-column by 10-row grid of 1 inch by 2-5/8 inch labels, with no gutter between labels (Avery uses kiss-cut die lines instead).

Open the PDF in Adobe Acrobat Reader, your browser’s built-in viewer, or Preview on macOS. In the print dialog, set Scaling to Actual Size (or 100%) — this is the single most important setting and the most common cause of misalignment when it gets left on Fit to Page or Shrink to Fit. Feed the Avery 5160 sheet into your printer, paper-side up, and print.

Method 2: Word mail merge from Excel

If you already work primarily in Microsoft Word and have a recurring mailing template, mail merge accomplishes the same outcome with more clicks. The path:

1. In Word, Mailings tab → Start Mail Merge → Labels.
2. In the Label Options dialog, choose Vendor: Avery US Letter, Product: 5160. Click OK.
3. Mailings → Select Recipients → Use an Existing List — point to your Excel file. Word reads it directly without needing a CSV export.
4. Click in the first label cell, then Mailings → Insert Merge Field for each column you want on the label. Add line breaks between fields manually.
5. Click Update Labels — Word copies the field layout into every label on the sheet.
6. Preview Results to see actual data, then Finish & Merge → Print Documents.

Word’s merge is genuinely free and works without any third-party tool, but the setup overhead is meaningful for a one-off mailing. The advantage emerges if you have a fixed template you reuse monthly — save the merge document and the next month you just point it at the new data file.

Method 3: Avery Design & Print

Avery’s Design & Print is a free browser-based template designer. The flow:

1. Pick template 5160 from the product gallery.
2. Import addresses from Excel or Google Sheets (CSV upload or paste).
3. Customize the label design (fonts, return address, logo).
4. Click Print to PDF or print directly.

The Avery tool is well-suited for non-technical users who want a designer-style layout with formatting flourishes (logos, color blocks, decorative borders). For straight text-only mailing labels at volume, the workflow is heavier than necessary — you make a lot of clicks per label set.

Quick comparison

Common mistakes when printing from Excel

Print scaling set to Fit to Page

This is the most common alignment failure. The PDF is sized exactly for the Avery 5160 grid; any scaling proportionally shrinks the labels and shifts them inward. Fix: in the print dialog, set Scaling / Page Sizing to Actual Size or 100%.

Saving as legacy CSV instead of CSV UTF-8

If any address contains a non-ASCII character (accents, umlauts, special punctuation), the legacy CSV encoding will replace those characters with question marks or garbled bytes. Save as CSV UTF-8 specifically to preserve them. Symptoms: Smíth becomes "Smith??" on the label, or a French address loses its accents.

Excel stripping leading zeros from ZIP codes

Excel treats ZIP-looking columns as numbers by default, dropping leading zeros from New England states (01xxx Massachusetts, 02xxx Rhode Island, 03xxx New Hampshire). Symptom: addresses to ZIP 02115 become 2115 on the label, which the postal service may misroute. Fix: format the ZIP column as Text before entering or pasting data, or prefix each value with a single quote to force text storage. The UrbanKit labels tool restores leading zeros automatically if it detects a numeric ZIP column.

Mismatched label sheet sizes

Avery sells four products in roughly the 30-up category — 5160 (paper-backed standard), 8160 (Easy Peel), 5260 (small paper sheets for cutting), and several store-brand equivalents. The PDF for 5160 prints correctly on 8160 and most store-brand "compatible with Avery 5160" sheets. It does not print correctly on 5260 (which has different dimensions despite the similar number) or on European A4-based label sheets.

Apartment numbers split across columns

If your Excel has separate columns for Street + Suite, make sure the labels tool concatenates them onto a single line. A label that reads "123 Main St" on one line and "Apt 4B" on another wastes a line and may overflow the 1-inch label height. Fix: in the column-mapping step, combine Street and Suite into one mapped output field.

Why Avery 5160 specifically?

Avery 5160 is the de facto standard for U.S. mailing labels because it’s the most common label size sold in office supply stores and the only format every printer driver targets correctly out of the box. The 1 by 2-5/8 inch dimension gives just enough room for a three-line address (name / street / city-state-zip) at readable point size, with 30 labels per sheet. Public-notice mailings, board-meeting notifications, neighborhood association communications, and most direct-mail bulk-rate campaigns use 5160 by default.

Adjacent formats serve specialized needs. Avery 8160 (same dimensions, Easy Peel backing) costs slightly more but peels more cleanly — useful for high-volume runs where peel speed matters. Avery 5163 (2 by 4 inch, 10 per sheet) is for larger shipping labels with return-address space. Avery 5167 (0.5 by 1.75 inch, 80 per sheet) is for tiny return-address-only labels. For radius public-notice mailings keyed by parcel polygon, 5160 is the right pick.

Related Resources

• CSV to Avery 5160 Labels tool — the in-browser tool referenced throughout this article
• Why Avery 5160 Labels Print Out of Alignment — And How to Fix It
• Avery 5160 Not Printing Correctly: The 6 Most Common Causes
• Avery 5160 Printing Tips: Get It Right the First Time
• The Honest Way to Deduplicate a Public-Notice Mailing List
• Radius Notice Mailing List Generator — for public-notice mailings driven by parcel polygons