Label we lost the lable on the base unit. can anyone tell me what the 4 buttons are labled?

Printing labels is a pain! It is much easier to print using an A4 sheet with (say) 7 rows of 4 labels on.
I suggest you use the Ricoh support site
http://www.ricoh-support.com/Enduser/support/

you need to calibrate. hold the feed button down intill it flashes 4 times in a row and the quickly let go. it will feed some labels to calibrate and should stop at the tear off. you also have to set label size in the driver to keep from losing calibration.

Make sure you are using thermal paper roll and not regular label roll.

hold down the feed button until both light flash off and let go. This will reset the printer. This should stop it from feeding multiple labels.

Best way to do this is to place label and textbox as usual but hide them from the properties.
In the SaveButton Click event, you can set the property for the label and textbox to visible dynamically by code.

The MPF is simply the "Manual Paper Feed".
Your printer is set by default that the MPF paper type is "plain paper". Since you are telling the printer that you are trying to print lables, the printer is simply telling you that you need to load the MPF with lables.

If you say "ok", the printer sould continue and print the lables.

If you only print lables, the you can change the default paper for the MPF tray to "lables", and then you will no longer be prompted to load the tray.

for starters you need to calibrate your printer.

Note: If printing in Direct Thermal Mode, default the printer first (4 flashes).

1. Load the labels and ribbon (if used) and close the printer
2. Turn on the printer power.
3. Allow the printer to feed or error out.
4. Press and hold the feed button until the green status LED flashes once, then twice. Release the feed button.
6. The printer will set the media sensor for the label backing being used and then automatically feed until a label is positioned at the printhead.
7. A profile of the media sensor settings (similar to the example in Figure 1) will print. Upon completion, the printer will save the new settings in memory and the printer is ready for normal operation.
8. Press the feed button. One entire blank label will feed. If this does not happen, try defaulting (Hold the FEED button until it flashes 4 times)

May be your problems can be solved doing a calibration. To do this, turn off the printer, press the feed key and turn on the printer. When the led flashes in red quickly release the feed key, the printer will start to calibrate and after the calibration will feed one label.

It is explained in the user manual.

pleasesir check its lock and screws for open it but take care