Printing Floppy Disk Labels

The Print labels… command lets you print one or more ﬂoppy disk labels.
To select a label for printing, simply click on a disk name. To select a range of disks, hold down the Shift key while dragging the mouse over the desired range. To select individual disks that are not together in the list, hold down the command key while clicking on each desired disk.

Each time you click on a disk name, its serial number and the number of ﬁles and folders on the disk are displayed below the list.

Click on one of the radio buttons to sort the list by name or by serial number.

If you prefer that folder names appear on the labels instead of ﬁle names, then check the “Folders only” checkbox.

The buttons in the lower right allow you to tell OffLine where to print the ﬁrst label on the ﬁrst label sheet. If you have a partially used label sheet, you can avoid waste by beginning on the ﬁrst unused label. If you are printing more than nine labels, then printing on subsequent pages will always begin with the ﬁrst (top left) label on the page.
Some laser printers have difﬁculty feeding partially used label sheets, and may jam. Consult your printer manufacturer or dealer if you are uncertain about feeding partially used label sheets.

When you click OK, you will see the standard print dialog for your printer. Click OK again to begin printing the labels.

Be sure to check “Larger print area” from the Options in your printer’s Page Setup dialog.

Label printing requires sheet-fed adhesive labels (Avery # 5196 or equivalent), and a page printer (laser or inkjet).

Label Printing Preferences

You can customize appearance of printed labels to accommodate your tastes and the characteristics of your printer. To set your preferences, choose Label Preferences… from the Edit menu.

Use the popup menus to choose the fonts that will be used to print the labels. Depending upon the number of ﬁles on a disk OffLine determines the type size required to print the ﬁle names. Since the type size may be as small as six points, we suggest that you select the File Name font with this in mind.

Check the “Expand archives” box if your want your labels to show individual ﬁles within StuffIt, Compactor, and AppleLink archives. If the expanded list produces too many ﬁles to ﬁt on a label, leaving the box unchecked will result in the printing of archive names but not their constituent ﬁles.

Normally, OffLine tries to ﬁt as many ﬁle names as possible on a label, using smaller type if necessary. Disks containing a small number of ﬁles result in labels printed in larger type sizes. If you prefer a consistent appearance among your labels, then check “Always use small type.”

Click on a border pattern that will be used to form a border around the body of each label (the hollow box means no border).

Select “Serial number” if you want the disk’s serial number (assigned by OffLine when the disk was cataloged) to appear on the top edge of the label. Select “Free space” if you prefer the label to show how much space remains available on each disk. Select “Neither” if you want only the disk name to be printed on the label edge.

The ﬁrst time you print labels,  you should examine them to ensure that the printed information aligns correctly with the labels on the sheet. Alignment varies slightly from one printer to another.

The scroll bars are used to ﬁne-tune the printing position on the label sheet.  If the alignment is off, you can use the scroll bars to move the printed image up to 1/4 inch in any direction, in increments as small as 1/72 inch. As you adjust the scroll bars, you can observe the effect of your adjustments by watching the movement of the sample label with respect to the top and left border of the window, which represent the top and left edges of the label sheet.

Label Description

Labels for 3-1/2 inch disks are designed to wrap around the top edge of the disk. When OffLine prints a label, it places information on the top edge and the front, leaving the back blank.

The top edge shows the disk’s name (in 8 point type) and either its serial number or the amount of free space (depending on your preferences setting).

The front of the label shows the disk name (in 12 point type)  and a list of the ﬁles on the disk.

The appearance of the list of ﬁles depends upon the number of ﬁles on the disk. Because label area is limited and type sizes less than 6 points are virtually unreadable, OffLine may not always be able to ﬁt all the ﬁle names on a label. If a disk has a large number of ﬁles, only the ﬁrst 30 names will appear on the label.

When printing labels, OffLine will try to ﬁt as many ﬁle names as possible on the label. However, if OffLine detects that a disk has many more ﬁles than could be printed (which would occur, for example, if you selected a hard drive), then OffLine will alert you to this condition, and will not attempt to print a ﬂoppy disk label for that disk.

Exporting the Catalog

Selecting the Export… command from the File menu invokes a standard Save as… dialog box. A default name is suggested (see Export preferences, below), but you can save the exported data in any folder and under any name you choose. Click OK to create a document containing all the information from the active catalog.

If you want to export the entries from only one disk (rather than from all the disks in the catalog), then select that disk and check the “Selected disk only” checkbox, before you choose Export… from the File menu.

Export Preferences…

Available from the Edit menu, this command invokes a dialog box in which you can set the format in which OffLine will export the contents of its catalog.

If you wish to export the catalog for use in a word processing application, choose Export as text ﬁle. The popup menu labeled “Text ﬁle format” contains the names of the most popular word processing applications. Choose the one you wish to launch when the exported text ﬁle is double-clicked from the Finder.

 

For example, suppose you wish to export the OffLine catalog for use in Microsoft Word. Choose Export as text ﬁle, and pick Microsoft Word from the popup menu. The next time you export the OffLine catalog (by choosing Export… from the File menu), the exported ﬁle you create will be recognized by the Finder as a Microsoft word document. If you double-click that document from the Finder, Microsoft Word will be launched, and will open the document.

If your word processor is not in the “Text ﬁle format” menu, don’t worry. No matter what you select, the exported document will be the same internally: plain text. This means that you can open it by choosing the Open command from any word processor.

Choose Export as comma-delimited ﬁle, or Export as tab-delimited ﬁle, if you intend to use the exported list in a database management or spreadsheet application. Most applications of this kind can easily open ﬁles in one of these formats. To learn how to open a delimited ﬁle from your database or spreadsheet application, consult the user manual for that application.

Your export preferences also apply when you click the Export… button in the Search window, to export a group of ﬁles resulting from a search, and when you use the Duplicates… command to build a list of duplicated ﬁles.

Using Multiple Catalogs

The ﬁrst time you launch OffLine, it creates and opens a catalog named “OffLine™ Catalog” in the folder from which you launched the program. When you quit the program, OffLine saves the name and location of the catalog in a document named “OffLine Prefs” in your System folder. Therefore, each time you launch the program, it opens the most recently used catalog.

If you wish, you can create and use additional catalogs, although only one can be active at a given time. To create a catalog, choose New… from the File menu. Then choose a name and folder from the Save File dialog. Finally, click OK if you’re satisﬁed. OffLine will create and open the new catalog.

To switch from the current catalog to another existing catalog, the procedure is almost the same. Choose Open…  from the File menu. Pick an existing catalog from the Open File dialog, then click OK if you’re satisﬁed. OffLine will close the current catalog and open the one you selected.