pealing labels from left to right on a sheet of labels is cumbersome, and it
has to be done if coellating letters to envelopes, etcetera.  I wanted a mail
merge that printed my labels top to bottom per column instead.

I search around, some said create a macro/vba function...

1) A little page setup on the margins to match the label. (Hint, make the
bottom margin a little shorter to allow for that troublesome last carriage
return that seems to bump you to a new page.)
2) Then I created COLUMNS [Format, Columns] that matched my labels
3) Now Create a table with only ONE column with the proper amount of rows to
match a page of labels.
4) Set the row height to the height of one label [Exactly, not At Lease]
5) With the mail merge tool bar open, click on the "Open Data Source" button.
6) Set up a cell with your fields the way you want them to display.
7) Copy and paste the Contents of the cell into the next cell below.
8) Insert a Word Field "Next Record" before your text in the second cell.
9) Copy that cell's contents and paste into all other cells.
10) MERGE ON! [merge to print or new document]

and voila! Your labels print top to bottom because they are following the
column and not the tab order of a three column table.