Certificate generator from Excel

From spreadsheet to certificates, step by step

1. Get the spreadsheet into shape

Give each recipient one row and each detail its own column: Name, Course, Date, Hours, Grade, Certificate No. The column names must be in the first row. If your sheet has a title, logo or merged cells above the headings, delete them (or copy the table to a new sheet) so the first non-empty row is the header row. Hidden columns are fine; the tool simply ignores columns you don’t use.

Check spelling while you’re there. It is much quicker to fix “Jhon” in Excel than to regenerate a stack of printed certificates, and people notice their own name first.

2. Export your design without the variable text

Design the certificate as usual in Canva, Word, PowerPoint, Affinity or Illustrator, but leave the recipient’s name, the course and the date blank. Export as PDF at the size you will print: A4 or US Letter, usually landscape. In Canva, PDF Print gives the sharpest artwork; in PowerPoint, save the slide as PDF.

3. Place the name and other fields

Add the PDF in step 1 of the tool and your spreadsheet in step 2. Click “+ Add text box” (or click a column name in the Columns list) and drag the box onto the name line. Set the alignment to Centre, then drag until the dashed guide shows it’s centred on the page. Turn on “Shrink text to fit the box width” for names so that the occasional very long name gets slightly smaller instead of running over the border. Repeat for the course, date and any certificate number.

4. Check the tricky rows

Switch to “Exact preview” and step through the rows with the arrows. Look at the longest name, anyone with accents (José, Zoë, Müller) and anyone with a hyphenated or double-barrelled surname. If your list includes names like Łukasz or Ayşe, the tool will say which rows need a font with extra letters; upload one such as Noto Sans or the font from your design.

5. Generate

To email certificates, choose Separate PDFs and a file name like {{Name}} - certificate; you’ll get a ZIP with one clearly named file per person. To print, choose One combined PDF and print it in one go.

Details that make certificates look professional

• Certificate numbers. Add a column with a formula such as ="CERT-"&TEXT(ROW()-1,"0000") in Excel, then paste as values so the numbers don’t change later. Print it small in a corner with No. {{Certificate No.}}.
• Consistent dates. Format the date column in Excel exactly as it should appear, such as “12 March 2026”. The tool uses the text Excel displays, so what you see in the cell is what gets printed.
• Matching typography. Script fonts often look best for names. Add the .ttf or .otf file you used in the design (check its licence allows embedding) and choose it for the name box.
• Signatures. Put scanned signatures in the design itself so they’re identical on every copy.
• Printing at the right size. Print the combined PDF at 100% or “Actual size”, not “Fit to page”, so the name stays exactly on its line and the border isn’t cropped.

Sending certificates by email

This tool doesn’t send email: sending would mean uploading your recipients’ data, which is exactly what it avoids. The ZIP of individually named PDFs is designed to make the next step easy. Most email platforms and mail-merge add-ons that support per-recipient attachments can match a file to each person using the file name, so a pattern like {{Email}}.pdf or {{Name}} - certificate saves a lot of manual work.

Questions about certificates

Want to know more about how the tool works? See the PDF mail merge overview, or read how to create personalised letters and fill PDF forms from a CSV file.