Place cards and name badges

1. 01Paste names: one per line, and after a semicolon the second line (role, company, club). Or copy the table from Excel and assign the columns.
2. 02Choose place cards or name badges, and the size you need.
3. 03Download the PDF, print at “Actual size”, cut and fold or stick on.

Place cards. The card is printed unfolded, so twice as tall as folded: 100 × 50 mm folded is 100 × 100 mm on the sheet, four cards per A4. The name appears on both halves. The upper half is printed upside down, so that after folding it reads the right way up from the other side of the table. Solid gray lines are for cutting, the dashed one is the fold line. With cards 100 mm wide, only 5 mm margin is left on the left and right. If your printer does not print that close to the edge, the outer cut line is missing there; then measure 100 mm from the middle line.

Type size. All cards get the same type size so that the table looks uniform. It depends on the name that needs the most room and on the height of the card. Under the preview it says what limits the size: if it is the width of a single name, it names it, and if you shorten it (for example without a second first name), the type becomes larger for everyone. Often, though, it is the height of the card, and then shortening does not help. The shared type does not get smaller than 20 pt on place cards and 12 pt on name badges: a name that does not fit on one line goes on two. If that is not enough either, only that name is set smaller, down to 10 pt or 7 pt, and finally shortened with “…”. Exception: on a very small custom size, logo, second line, accent line or QR code sometimes leave no room for 20 pt or 12 pt. Then the names appear smaller, and the preview says so. With “Long names on two lines”, first and last name go one above the other as soon as the type becomes larger that way. The second line is equally small for all and is shortened if it does not fit.

Name badges. Labels of 63.5 × 38.1 mm (21 per sheet, 3 × 7) are a common standard grid, sold for example under the numbers L7160 and J8160. 70 × 36 mm (24 per sheet) is also made by several manufacturers. Compare the sizes on your package; if they differ, enter them under “Custom grid”. Insert badges of 90 × 54 mm are for cutting out, 10 per sheet, with cut marks at the edge. “Marks” are short strokes at the sheet edge, “Frame” draws a thin line around each badge.

Contact QR code. Only on name badges. It contains name, second line (as company), email and phone as an electronic business card (vCard). Anyone with neither email nor phone gets no code. From a table, the tool takes the phone number only from a column with such a name (phone, mobile, cell); if the table has no column names, only values that start with 0 or + and look like a number. This way birthdays or membership numbers do not end up in the code unnoticed. Which columns they are is shown under the switch. On the small labels it is a good 2 cm in size; hold the phone close to scan. The less information, the coarser the pattern and the easier to read.

Tables and sorting. Columns copied from Excel or Numbers come with a tab, CSV files with semicolon or comma, and the tool recognizes that. It assigns columns like first name, last name, role, email and phone on its own, and you can change it. Sorting is alphabetical. The last name is the last word, or with “Miller, Erica” what is before the comma. Name prefixes like “von” or “de” are not recognized: “Johann Wolfgang von Goethe” is filed under G, “Anna de Vries” under V.

Font and characters. The type is set in Helvetica, the standard font of every PDF, the name in bold. Umlauts, ß, é, ñ and ø work. Letters like ł, ș or ğ become the nearest base letter, and emojis and other scripts (Cyrillic, Greek, Arabic) are missing in print. The preview shows both beforehand. In the QR code, the name stays as you wrote it.

Logo. PNG, JPG, WebP or GIF up to 3 MB. It is scaled down here in your browser to at most 900 pixels and embedded in the PDF, small and centered above the name. SVG files do not work, save the logo as PNG first.

Saving. “Save as file” writes list, settings and logo into a JSON file on your device, and “Load from file” reads it in again. Nothing stays behind in the browser. The file contains the names and, if present, email addresses and phone numbers in plain text. A file from another tool or with an unknown version is rejected instead of being half loaded.

Limits. Only A4 portrait, one font, at most 1,000 names at once and 200 characters per name. Whether the printer hits exactly depends on its paper feed: half a millimeter of offset is normal, which is why every card has a margin inside. Pre-cut place card sheets have their own sizes and margins; the place cards here are meant for plain paper or card stock that you cut yourself.