Letter to 4 × 6
Convert an 8.5 × 11 shipping label to 4 × 6
Drop in the letter-size PDF your marketplace gave you. The label gets found on the page and saved as a true 4 × 6, at full size, with the barcode untouched.
Converted in your browser. Your shipping label is never uploaded.
Why the label prints so small
A thermal label printer is loaded with 4 × 6 stock, and it expects a PDF page that is also 4 × 6. When the page it receives is 8.5 × 11, the driver has to reconcile the difference, and its default answer is to scale the entire page down until it fits the roll.
The label was only occupying part of that letter page, so it keeps the same proportion after scaling. A 4 × 6 label on a letter sheet is roughly a quarter of the page area, which is why it arrives as a small label surrounded by blank thermal stock.
| Printer and paper | What happens | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Thermal, 4 × 6 roll | Scales the whole 8.5 × 11 page onto 4 × 6 | Label prints small, barcode may not scan |
| Laser or inkjet, letter | Prints the page at full size | Correct label, but three quarters of a sheet wasted |
| Thermal, after cropping | Page is already 4 × 6 | Label fills the stock at 1:1 |
How to convert one
- 1Drop the letter-size PDF above. It is read locally, so nothing uploads.
- 2The page is scanned for a label-shaped block of ink and cropped to it. Check the before and after preview.
- 3If the crop is off, choose Adjust label area and drag your own box.
- 4Leave the output on 4 × 6 Shipping Label and download.
- 5Print at 100% or Actual Size. Do not use Fit to Page.
4 × 6 and the sizes near it
Thermal label stock is sold under several names that all mean the same thing, and a couple that do not. If your printer is loaded with something other than true 4 × 6, choose a custom size instead.
- 4 × 6 inches, 288 × 432 points, 101.6 × 152.4 mm. The standard shipping label.
- 100 × 150 mm is sold as 4 × 6 but is 1.6 mm narrower and 2.4 mm shorter. Close enough in practice on most printers.
- 4 × 6.75 and 4 × 8 exist for carrier-specific formats with an extra tear-off section.
- Anything described as 2 × 1 or 4 × 2 is an address or barcode label, not a shipping label.
If the label came from eBay
eBay Standard Envelope labels are a special case. They are 4 × 6 like any other label, but they are designed to be printed onto an envelope rather than onto label stock, and the return address, postage, and destination are drawn as three separate blocks. The eBay Standard Envelope converter rebuilds those blocks as ordinary envelope addressing, which this tool deliberately does not do.
Questions
Why does my 4 × 6 label come out tiny on a thermal printer?
Because the PDF page is 8.5 × 11, not 4 × 6. The printer scales the whole letter page down to fit a 4 × 6 roll, and the label ends up occupying the same small fraction of the page that it did before. Cropping the page down to the label itself fixes the cause rather than fighting it in the print dialog.
Can I just use Fit to Page or Shrink to Fit instead?
You can, but you should not. Those options resize the barcode along with everything else, and a barcode printed at 78 percent of its intended width can fail to scan at the carrier. Cropping keeps the label at exactly its original size.
Which marketplaces does this work with?
Any of them. The tool looks for a label-shaped block of ink on the page rather than matching a specific marketplace template, so eBay, PayPal, USPS Click-N-Ship, UPS, FedEx, Shopify, Etsy, Mercari, Poshmark, and Depop labels all work the same way.
The label was not found automatically. What now?
Use Adjust label area and drag a box around the label. The selection locks to the 4 × 6 shape by default, and on a multi-page PDF you can apply the same box to every page at once, which is the normal case when all the pages came out of the same marketplace.
Does it handle a PDF with several labels in it?
Yes, and you can drop several files at once. Every page is scanned separately and each label becomes a page in the output PDF, so the whole batch prints as one job. A free run converts 10 labels at a time, which is more than most days need.
What about the packing slip half of the page?
It gets left behind. The tool keeps only the region you are cropping to, so instructions, tear-off receipts, and packing slips do not reach the output.
Is my file uploaded anywhere?
No. The PDF is read and rewritten by JavaScript running in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server, and nothing is kept once you close the tab.
Other label tools
- eBay Standard EnvelopeFree eBay Standard Envelope ConverterTurn a 4 × 6 or letter-size eBay label into a #10 envelope you can print directly, with the return address upper left and postage upper right.Convert an eBay label
- Return labelsResize a return shipping label for a 4 × 6 printerPull the label off a full-page return label PDF and print it at full size on a 4 × 6 thermal printer.Fix a return label
- A4 to 4 × 6Convert an A4 shipping label to 4 × 6Crop an A4 label PDF down to a true 4 × 6 (100 × 150 mm) label for a thermal printer.Convert from A4
- Labels per sheetPrint two shipping labels per pageFit two labels on one sheet at full size instead of burning a whole sheet per label.Combine onto sheets
- Half-used sheetsPrint on the unused half of a label sheetPlace a label in the position that is still free on a part-used label sheet, instead of throwing the sheet away.Use a part-used sheet