This is spot on. Thanks to Slava pointing out this blog post
https://www.teamdesk.net/blog/tips-tricks/multi-record-documents-creation/, I played with this and discovered the same thing. It works just fine if you:
* generate template in setup to get the fields from your contacts table (you can make it easier for yourself by setting the base font of the generated template, to the same thing you'll want to use in your final doc template, like Calibri 10pt)
* create a word doc with two columns, set the base font by selecting all and just setting to, say, Calibri 10pt, set File, Page Setup to set the paper size and margins as usual.
* insert a 1 cell table and set the size of the cell to fill the column and be tall enough to fit your printed label.
* press Tab in the cell to make another cell below, until you have, say, 6 cells in the left column, adjusting height as needed.
* keep pressing Tab to make, say, another 6 cells on the right. These 12 cells are where your data will be merged to.
* add a text shape in the upper left table cell, to allow you to fine tune the position of the text in the cell.
* copy the merge fields you need from the template you generated, pasting them into the text shape in your upper left cell.
* format the text and arrange how you need it (e.g. paragraph format before/after 0px, line spacing exactly xx points, where xx points is the size of your text)
* adjust the space between the columns and the location of the text shape in the cell.
* upload the doc to your contacts table setting as multi-record, no page break, setting roles and views as needed, setting as word or pdf as appropriate.
Test and adjust. Teamdesk is smart enough to merge the next line of data into the next table cell in the column, and will continue on to column two, then other pages as needed. You can tighten up the text shape just a bit to get the text to be inside the borders of the actual label.