Why a frame exists
Most keycard sleeves are designed as a small printed card: windows, lines, or labelled fields for the facts the hotel expected to show. Room number is often one of those windows. Guest name and breakfast may be too. Group name usually is not.
PrintKey prints onto an A7 insert that sits in that holder. Placement (X and Y in millimetres) puts each field in the right spot. A frame around text is the extra mark: a black frame around the words themselves, so a field can read as a window even when the original holder never printed one. In Settings that checkbox uses the same words.
That is useful when your stock is not one standard layout, or when you want a line the sleeve was never designed to carry.
When a frame helps
Room number without a printed window
Some holders have a printed window that already marks the room. You print the number inside that window and leave PrintKey’s frame off. The sleeve is doing the framing.
Other holders leave room number as bare space, or put it somewhere the printed card never labelled. Then a number on its own can look like a stray figure. Turn the frame on for room number so guests and staff read it as the room field, in the place you chose on that stock.
Group name the holder never had
Many hotels add a group or conference name on the insert even though the original keycard holder has no printed slot for it. The other fields may already sit in printed windows. Group name would otherwise float as a third or fourth line with no visual job.
Give group name a frame so it joins the same layout language as the rest of the card. Place it where it will not collide with room, name, or breakfast, then lock that on the printer. The desk only types the name for that run, or leaves it empty.
The same idea applies to guest name or breakfast if your stock has a printed window for one field and not for another. Frame is per field. You do not have to frame everything.
When to leave the frame off
Skip the frame when the holder already has a printed window and you are printing inside that window. Two frames on the same field look like a mistake: one from the sleeve, one from the PDF.
Also skip it when the field should stay quiet: a breakfast time that already sits on a printed line, or a name that is meant to read as body text rather than a labelled window.
What Settings stores
Frame is a printer setting, like X, Y, font, and bold. It is saved on that hotel’s printer profile. Every shift that uses the same printer gets the same choice. The desk does not turn frames on or off for a single group.
Settings stores whether a field gets a frame. It does not store the words. Room, name, and breakfast still come from the guest list and the breakfast field in Label options. Group name is typed in Label options for that run only.
Empty text means no empty frame
A frame is drawn only when that field has text. If group name is left empty in Label options, PrintKey does not create the line and does not draw an empty frame. The rest of the label stays as you placed it.
Test both runs after you turn group name’s frame on: one with a sample name, one with the field left empty. The empty run should look like your usual room, name, and breakfast layout.
Placement is still X and Y
A frame does not replace calibration. It only draws around the words once they are on the page. Get height and left/right placement right first, then decide which fields need a frame.
How to open Settings, what millimetres do, and how to save a baseline is in Printer layout settings for A7 holder labels.
Where PrintKey fits
PrintKey is not only paste-from-MEWS and print. It also lets a hotel match the insert to the holder they already buy: move room, name, breakfast, and optional group name in millimetres, and draw a frame around a field when the printed sleeve has no window for it.
That is why the same product can sit on stock that already has printed windows, and on stock that needs a room number or group name made visible as its own field.