Hi,
I use a brother thermal printer to print customer address to then stick on an envelope. To do this I click on the customer order in the shopify app and then click the copy icon next to ‘default address’. From here I then change to the brother thermal printer app, paste the address and print.
Now the problem is about 90% of the time the address that is listed next to the copy icon in the shopify app does not include the customers name. This means I have to manually type the customers name into the brother app followed by pasting the address.
The other 10% of the time the customers name is listed with the address next to the copy icon. This is great because all I have to do is click the copy icon and paste into the brother app and print.
I have tried to work out what the customer is inputting at the checkout stage that makes shopify combine the customers name and address into one next to the copy icon but havent figured it out.
Has anyone else had this issue and came up with solution? Any help appreciated!
Thanks!
Not showing the name might have to do with your checkout process. I have “Require first and last name” checked, so the name always shows up. Or you could just check “Require customers to sign in to their account before checkout”.
Definitely would be irritating if I had to type every name into the P-touch editor… but Im confused, on my end when you click on the order, the right column has “shipping address” with a pencil edit button. If you hover over the address it has a clipboard to copy address. Alternatively, you can go back to the Orders screen and click on the customers name, and click view customer. Now the right column says “default address”. But all the names are there so I don’t personally know how you’re getting that.
Thanks for the response, some points listed below -
I will put a screenshot of where in the shopify phone app I am copying the addresses from. When it is working correctly the customers name is listed as the first thing under ‘default address’ followed by their address.
The workflow of how i print address labels is at the end of the day I print all the labels at once flicking back and fourth between shopify app and brother printer app. This is good because when I am at the position shown in the screen shot I can just swipe left and right to go to the next customer.
Not sure the exact root cause, but what you’re seeing is the distinction between the customer name like in the customer object itself and the customer name in the shipping address. Usually there should be a customer name in the shipping address if they checked out normally. Just a guess, but could these be orders created via some other method or app or channel? That might be bypassing it somehow.
Only solutions I can think of would be some sort of Shopify Flow setup to copy in the customer name (could get complicated). Or if you find another app to help print the shipping labels, I think they might auto merge the customer name into the shipping address if it’s blank. Shopify Shipping might even do this, but not sure.
All sales are made through website, here is a picture where the name is included with the address.
Hey there @Swissecheese
What’s happening is likely tied to how customers fill out their shipping info during checkout. If they skip entering their first/last name in the right field (or Shopify pulls their Apple Pay/Google Pay name differently), the default address shown in your admin might not include their name next to the “copy” icon.
Unfortunately, Shopify doesn’t offer a native setting to force-merge the customer name into the default address field. That’s why it works sometimes and not others, it’s inconsistent because it depends on how that data is submitted.
Quick workarounds:
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Use the Packing Slip instead: If you’re on Shopify’s built-in fulfillment page, you can print or preview the packing slip, it always includes the customer name + address. You can copy from there and paste into your Brother app.
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Use Shopify Flow (if available) to tag orders missing names, or just to build an automation flagging them for manual check.
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Use a shipping app that formats shipping labels more consistently, even for copy-paste workflows. (Though most apps focus on label printing, not manual copy-paste like yours)
Not perfect, but I know that pain of having to manually type in names 
Hope this helps a bit!
If it does, feel free to mark it as a solution so others can find it too 
Unfortunately none of those solutions would work, I don’t think I should require an extra app just to get shopify to format the address correctly.
My question would be, what information does shopify want to output to the copy paste area. Because right now it is inconsistent what they are outputting, which makes it more difficult for the seller to fullfill.
With regards to the packing slip that will require more effort. First I have to generate the packing slip, then I have to drag the tiny little arrows to copy the part of the address I want. It’s much quicker to just look at the name and type it in manually.
They almost have it right, like having the little copy icon right there next to address means they know some people are using a simple label printer where they just want to copy and paste the address. They just have to get the formatting correct to always include the name, it shouldn’t be that difficult I’d think.
Thanks for your suggestions though, hopefully they see this and make a change?
What if you created a template in the brother software, called Address1. Then you send the packing slip to the label printer under that template. Align the actual layout to only show the name and address. I’m away so I can’t test.
I guess for any solution to be good it has to be quicker than me typing in the name manually, which is about 20 seconds by the time I look at the name, flick to the printer app, type it in, then go back to shopify and double check spelling, then copy address, then paste address into printer app.
I don’t think getting the packing slip and importing and aligning will be quicker than that.
When the name is listed in the correct space in shopify its probably about 5-7 seconds to print each one, and it’s easy, no brain power required
