Web app · 2026
Letter Rip
A non-profit I offer technology support for is moving every computer to managed laptops with the usual online office suite blocked, and the one approved suite fumbles envelopes. So I built Letter Rip. Volunteers open a bookmark, type an address, and print a standard business envelope. Nothing to install, no server, nothing uploaded.
- Each address gets its own font. The preview is the PDF.
- Bundled fonts, a searchable library, or whatever's already installed.
- Print opens the PDF in a new tab. Match the paper size.
- Drop in a spreadsheet. Its columns fill in each envelope.
Everything runs in the browser. I have a real affinity for browser-based tools: done well, they do most of what a desktop app can, and nobody has to install anything. Letter Rip builds each envelope as a PDF with the exact page size baked in, so the print dialog already knows what paper it's printing on. No envelope tray? Print on Letter or A4 instead and tell it where on the sheet the envelope sits. On a phone it prints through the share menu. The return address stays on that machine. The recipient is gone when you close the tab.
Each address gets its own font, size, and alignment, with bold, italic, and a size per line. Pick from fourteen bundled faces, search a free font library, or use anything installed on the computer. One rule runs through all of it: when a font has no bold or italic face, the PDF falls back to the closest face that exists. It never fakes a style, and the editor on screen doesn't either.
Mail merge is in too: one template, a list of addresses, one envelope each. Switch the To card to a list, drop in a spreadsheet (CSV, TSV, Excel, or cells pasted straight from one), and build the address out of fields: {{First}} {{Last}} on one line, {{City}}, {{State}} {{Zip}} on the next. A line whose fields are all empty disappears, so a missing second street line never leaves a gap. Step through the envelopes with the arrows to spot-check, then print the whole stack at once. The list never leaves the device and isn't kept between sessions. Only the template is.
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