How to print name badges from an Excel list

You have a spreadsheet with 80 names. You need 80 badges by Thursday. This job looks trivial until you're doing it at 9pm with a mail merge that keeps splitting someone's surname across two lines.

Here are the four ways people actually do it, and where each one bites.

Option 1: Word mail merge

The classic. Set up a label template, connect your Excel file, insert merge fields, print.

Mail merge works and costs nothing, but it fights you the whole way: label templates that don't match the badge holders you bought, fonts that resize themselves, a logo you have to position with invisible tables. And when someone adds three late names to the list, you're back in the template hoping nothing shifted. If you do this once a year, you'll relearn it from scratch every time.

Option 2: Canva bulk create

Canva's bulk create feature maps a CSV onto a designed template, and the design part is genuinely pleasant. Two catches. First, bulk create sits behind the Pro plan, so the "free" route involves a trial you'll forget to cancel. Second, Canva outputs pages, not print-imposed sheets — getting ten A7 badges onto A4 with cut lines is your problem again.

Option 3: pre-printed label sheets

Avery-style sticker sheets with a matching template. Fine for a one-off internal meeting where nobody minds a peeling sticker on a jumper. For an open day or a conference, stickers read as improvised, they curl by mid-morning, and you can't reuse them with lanyards or holders.

Option 4: a browser-based badge tool

Upload the spreadsheet, style one badge, and let the tool lay them out on A4 with crop marks. This is the route we'd pick even if we hadn't built one — the layout maths (how many A7 badges fit on A4, where the cut lines go, keeping long names on one line) is exactly the part humans get wrong and software gets right.

Ours is free and runs entirely in your browser: the spreadsheet never uploads anywhere, which matters more than usual if your list is staff or parents rather than conference delegates. CSV or Excel in, print-ready PDF out, no account.

Print tips that save reprints

Whichever route you take:

• Print a single test page first and cut one badge. Holders are unforgiving — 2mm off and the name sits behind the seam.
• Use 160–200gsm paper. Standard 80gsm copier paper flops in a holder and wrinkles in a lanyard sleeve.
• Match the badge size to holders you already have. A6 (105×148mm) and A7 (74×105mm) cover almost every holder sold in the UK; measure before you design.
• Sort the list before you print. Badges laid out alphabetically by surname turn a chaotic registration desk into a calm one.
• Leave the last row of a sheet blank on the test run — printers with tight bottom margins clip the final badge, and you want to know before printing eighty.

The five-minute version

If your list is already clean: open the badge generator (start from the conference or school open day template), drop in the Excel file, pick A7, add the logo, download the PDF, print at 160gsm, cut on the crop marks. Done before the kettle boils — and when three late names arrive on Thursday morning, re-upload and print one more sheet.