LabelChop

Shipping label printing problems and how to fix them

Fix off-centre, blank, cropped and blurry shipping labels on MyPost Business, eBay and 4x6 thermal printers.

·10 minutes reading
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Shipping label printing problems have a special way of showing up when you are already late for the post office. The order is packed, the buyer is waiting, and your thermal printer spits out a tiny barcode in the corner of a label.

Most of these problems are boring, fixable setup issues. Wrong page size, hidden browser scaling, an A4 PDF sent to a 4x6 printer, or a thermal printer that has not been calibrated since the day it came out of the box.

Packed parcels waiting for shipping labels in a small ecommerce workspace

In this article:

Common shipping label printing problems

Most sellers describe the problem differently, but the causes usually sit in the same few buckets.

You might see:

  • The shipping label prints off centre.
  • The label is too small on a 4x6 thermal sticker.
  • The label is cut off at the edge.
  • The whole label prints sideways.
  • The barcode looks blurry, faint or stretched.
  • The thermal printer feeds blank labels.
  • The printer skips every second label.
  • A4 MyPost Business labels refuse to behave on a thermal printer.

The first thing to work out is whether you have a printer problem or a PDF problem. That distinction saves a lot of mucking around.

If the printer can print a clean test label from its own utility, the hardware is probably fine. If the shipping label fails only when printed from MyPost Business, eBay, Shopify, Etsy or Amazon AU, the issue is usually the page size, scaling or PDF format.

If the printer cannot print its own test label properly, start with the printer. Reload the roll, calibrate it, clean the printhead and check the driver settings.

Quick checks before you waste more labels

Before you reprint the same bad label for the fourth time, run through this quick list.

  1. Check the label PDF size. Is it A4, A6 or 100x150mm?
  2. Set the print scale to 100% or actual size.
  3. Select the thermal printer, not your office printer.
  4. Set paper size to 100x150mm or 4x6 inch.
  5. Turn off browser headers and footers if printing from Chrome or Edge.
  6. Check orientation in the preview before printing.
  7. Print one test label, not the whole batch.
  8. If the printer is skipping or drifting, run calibration.

A seller checking printed shipping labels before packing orders

For A4 sheet labels, use A4 paper size and 100% scale. Do not let the print dialog shrink the page to fit the printable area. Generic label alignment guides, such as the OnlineLabels printer alignment guide, are useful for sheet labels, but shipping labels add another problem: carrier PDFs often are not built for your label stock.

For thermal printers, the paper size matters more than almost anything else. A 100x150mm printer expects one clean label page. If you send it a full A4 PDF, it has to guess what you meant.

That guess is where the mess starts.

How to fix shipping label printing problems by symptom

Use the symptom first. Do not reinstall every driver on the machine unless the simpler checks fail.

Label printing off centre

Label printing off centre usually means the page size, margins or calibration do not match the real label.

Try this:

  1. Open the PDF in Adobe Reader or your system PDF viewer instead of the browser.
  2. Set scale to actual size or 100%.
  3. Set paper size to 100x150mm or 4x6 inch for thermal labels.
  4. For A4 sheets, confirm the PDF is designed for that exact sheet layout.
  5. Run thermal printer calibration if the first label starts correctly, then drifts.
  6. Check that the roll guides touch the label edges without bending them.

If the label is an A4 MyPost Business PDF, do not expect a 4x6 printer to centre it neatly by itself. Crop or convert the label first, then print the cropped 4x6 page.

Label prints too small

A tiny label almost always means an A4 page has been shrunk to fit a 4x6 sticker.

The fix is straightforward:

  1. Check whether your shipping platform can export A6 or 100x150mm labels.
  2. If it can, download that format and print it at 100%.
  3. If it only gives you A4, crop the shipping label area before printing.
  4. Avoid screenshots unless you have no other option. Screenshots can soften barcodes.

This is common for sellers moving from an inkjet printer to a Dymo, Zebra, Brother or MUNBYN thermal printer. The printer is not broken. It is receiving the wrong page.

Label is cut off

A cut-off shipping label usually points to the opposite problem: the printer is printing only part of a larger page, or the label is being scaled beyond the printable area.

Check these settings:

  • Paper size set to 100x150mm or 4x6 inch.
  • Scale set to 100%, not 120% or a random custom value.
  • Orientation set correctly.
  • Margins set to none or default, depending on the driver.
  • PDF page already cropped to the shipping label, not the full A4 sheet.

If the barcode or delivery address is cut off, do not lodge the parcel. Reprint it. Australia Post and marketplace carriers need the barcode and address block clear enough to scan and sort.

Label prints sideways

Sideways labels are normally an orientation mismatch.

Change one setting at a time:

  1. Try portrait first for 100x150mm labels.
  2. If the preview is sideways, rotate it 90 degrees.
  3. Check whether the printer driver has its own rotate option.
  4. Turn off auto-rotate if it keeps flipping the label the wrong way.

The preview matters. If the preview is wrong, the printed label will probably be wrong too.

Barcode is blurry, faded or hard to scan

A barcode needs sharp black lines and clean white space around it. If you stretch the label, print a screenshot, use low darkness, or tape over the barcode, scanning can fail.

Try this:

  1. Reprint from the original PDF, not a screenshot.
  2. Use 100% scale.
  3. Clean the thermal printhead.
  4. Increase darkness one step at a time.
  5. Slow the print speed if your driver allows it.
  6. Use better direct thermal labels if the print still looks patchy.
  7. Keep tape away from the barcode where possible.

Do not manually stretch a label to make it fill the sticker. It may look fine to your eye and still scan badly.

Thermal printer troubleshooting for Dymo, Zebra and Brother

Thermal printer troubleshooting is less scary when you split it into three areas: media, calibration and print quality.

Thermal printer and shipping label roll on a desk

Blank thermal labels

If labels feed but nothing prints, check the simple stuff first.

  1. Scratch the label surface with a fingernail or coin.
  2. If it turns dark, that is the printable side.
  3. Reload the roll so the printable side faces the printhead.
  4. Confirm the driver is set for direct thermal labels.
  5. Run a printer self-test.
  6. Clean the printhead if the label is faint or patchy.

Dymo LabelWriter 550-series printers can also reject some third-party rolls because of label detection. If you use a newer Dymo and it refuses to detect the roll, check Dymo support for your exact model.

Skipping labels or feeding too far

Skipping is usually a calibration or sensor issue.

For Zebra desktop printers, run media calibration after changing rolls. Zebra printers need to learn where each label starts and ends, especially when you switch between gap labels, black-mark labels or different sizes.

For Brother QL printers, confirm the installed DK roll matches the label size selected in the driver. Brother's Australian support portal is a good starting point for model-specific steps: Brother support.

For Dymo printers, check the roll is seated firmly and the selected label size matches the physical roll.

Label jams

A jam is annoying, but forcing the label path can damage the printer.

Do this instead:

  1. Turn the printer off.
  2. Open the cover and remove the roll.
  3. Pull out stuck labels slowly.
  4. Remove torn backing or adhesive scraps.
  5. Clean the roller if adhesive has built up.
  6. Reload the roll squarely.
  7. Calibrate or feed one label before printing orders again.

Do not reuse labels that have partly peeled from the backing. They are much more likely to jam again.

Printer driver problems

If the printer test label works but shipping labels still fail, check the driver.

On Windows, look in printer preferences and confirm the default paper size is 100x150mm or 4x6. On macOS, check the paper size in the print dialog and save a preset once it works.

Cheap generic thermal printers often install with odd default sizes. Fix that once at the operating system level, then check it again inside Adobe Reader or the browser before printing a batch.

MyPost Business, eBay and marketplace label fixes

The marketplace or shipping platform affects the PDF you receive. That affects how you should print it.

MyPost Business label printing problems

Australia Post's MyPost Business is built for Australian small businesses, but many sellers still run into A4 label PDFs. That is fine for office printers. It is painful for thermal printers.

If MyPost Business gives you A6 or 100x150mm output, use it. Set your thermal printer to the same size and print at 100%.

If MyPost Business gives you A4, crop or convert the label first. Sending the full A4 page straight to a 4x6 printer is the reason labels print tiny, cut off or off centre.

eBay Australia labels

eBay Australia's help page on printing postage labels explains the basic workflow, but it will not fix your printer settings for you.

For eBay labels, download the PDF first if browser printing behaves badly. Then open it in a proper PDF viewer, choose the right paper size and print a single test label.

If you use eBay for some orders and MyPost Business for others, do not assume the PDFs are identical. Check each format before batch printing.

Shopify, Etsy and Amazon AU labels

Shopify, Etsy and Amazon AU sellers hit the same practical issue: the label source changes, but the printer still needs a clean page at the right size.

For each platform:

  1. Check whether the label can be downloaded as 4x6 or 100x150mm.
  2. Avoid printing from a browser tab if scaling keeps changing.
  3. Save a working printer preset.
  4. Reprint from the original PDF if the barcode looks soft.
  5. Keep packing slips separate from shipping labels when the PDF includes both.

The more places you sell, the more important this becomes. Mixed PDFs are fine for an office printer. They are messy for a thermal printer unless each label page is already cropped correctly.

Printer settings being checked before sending shipping labels to print

If this guide matches the problem you are seeing, these deeper setup guides are worth reading next:

Conclusion

Most shipping label printing problems come down to one mismatch: the PDF, print dialog and printer are not using the same size.

Start with the boring checks. Use 100% scale. Match the paper size. Calibrate the printer. Reprint from the original PDF. If the label comes from MyPost Business as A4 and your printer expects 4x6, crop or convert it before printing.

If you are doing this every day, LabelChop can remove the repeat work. It watches your Downloads folder, detects MyPost Business A4 labels, crops them to 100x150mm and sends them to your thermal printer. You can check the pricing or read the FAQ when you are ready to stop fighting the print dialog.