EasyEnvelopes streamlines printing for Mac users

May 8, 2011 at 12:00a.m.

Envelopes are a strange animal in the office world. We have printers that print on just about anything these days. They can accommodate almost any paper size, and some will even print directly to optical media, such as CD and DVD discs.

But the humble envelope continues to be a problem for all but the most sophisticated printer these days.

The other day, I needed to address an envelope and although there was a slot for me to insert a single envelope into my printer, I didn’t have the software to make it print.

Fortunately, I discovered EasyEnvelopes from Ambrosia Software. This simple little dashboard widget for Macintosh was not only easy to use; it’s also completely free. Just use the included installer and you are ready to go.

EasyEnvelopes asks you some initial setup questions such as the size of the envelope. The Macintosh operating system has several choices of envelope size, or you can create customized sizes on the fly if you have something that’s not standard. All of that is actually done by the Mac OS. But it’s nice that Ambrosia has chosen to let their EasyEnvelopes application integrate so seamlessly.

EasyEnvelopes lets you use any font installed on your Mac. You can choose a different font for the mailing address as well as a different one for the return address. Again, this is mostly due to Ambrosia’s integration of their EasyEnvelopes application to the Mac OS.

As for the return address, EasyEnvelopes lets you set up different ones for your home and work as well as custom addresses. You can also opt to print the return address on the front or back of the envelope. Addresses can also be directly imported from your Mac’s Address Book application.

As you type each letter, EasyEnvelopes will begin to display every matching name in your address book. You can keep typing to narrow the results, or just scroll through the displayed names and make your selection. Easy- Envelopes even keeps track of recently used names so you can select from those you use most frequently.

Another feature lets you print postal bar codes directly onto your envelope. EasyEnvelopes will generate the postal bar codes for you. When you have configured EasyEnvelopes, it remembers your choices so that the next time you want to use it, just insert an envelope into your printer and you’re ready to go.

A nice touch is the ability to shrink the widget to a smaller size. Ambrosia realizes that display screen space is limited for widgets, so why kludge everything up with a huge application?

Just click on EasyEnvelopes’ postal stamp when you are ready to use it, and EasyEnvelopes expands to a nice-sized envelope that displays all of your information so you can see how it will look before you print it. When you are ready to print, just click on the stamp.

The bottom line is that Ambrosia took full advantage of the Mac OS to come up with a really nice little widget that prints just about any kind of envelope using the information you already have in your Mac. It couldn’t be more simple to use and again, the price is certainly right.

While there, check out the other Ambrosia line of applications. All of them are well done and certainly worth your consideration.

Craig Crossman is a national newspaper columnist writing about computers and technology. He also hosts “Computer America,” heard weeknights on Business TalkRadio, 10 p.m.-midnight. For more information, visit his website at www.computeramerica.com.

2011, McClatchy-Tribune Information Services