Organization Badge Maker
Paste or load a CSV with one line per person, with columns such as name, title, id and photo, and this lays out ID badges on an A4 or Letter sheet, ten CR80 cards to a page, with every back placed where its front will land once the sheet is turned over its long or short edge. IDs print as you supplied them, leading zeros included, and the tool never makes up a number. Photos are matched to rows by the file name in the photo column or by the ID, and a row whose photo is missing prints a placeholder and is flagged before you can export, so a batch of fifty never reaches the printer with a gap nobody saw. Download the sheets as a PDF at the paper's exact size, drawn at 300 dpi, or as PNG images, save the layout as a file for the next batch, and print an alignment test to measure how far your printer shifts the back. Nothing is uploaded: the names, IDs and photos stay in this browser.
Drawing the sheet.
Print at 100% (Actual size in most print dialogs), never Fit to page, and pick the same duplex flip in the print dialog as here. The PDF pages are the sheet's exact size and drawn at 300 dpi.
Layout
Long-edge flip turns the sheet over its long side, like a book page, so each back is placed where its front will be once the sheet is turned. The alignment test prints a cross at every slot on both sides. Turn the printed sheet to its back, the way round that makes the Back labels read upright, and hold it to a light: where a back cross sits to the right of the front cross showing through, type that distance as a negative Across offset, and where it sits lower, as a negative Down offset.
Badges
Common questions
- How do I make ID cards for my staff or students?
- Put one line per person in the badges.csv panel, under a header line such as name,title,id,photo, or press Load CSV to open a file. Type the organization name, pick a band colour, add an optional label strip such as STAFF or STUDENT, and choose the badge size, the paper and the duplex flip under Layout. Press Add photos to add pictures, which are matched to rows by file name. The preview shows each sheet with the positions of every badge listed under it. When the flags are cleared, press Download PDF and print it at 100% with the same duplex flip you chose here.
- Can I make many ID cards at once from Excel or Google Sheets?
- Yes. Save or download the sheet as CSV (in Excel, CSV UTF-8 keeps accented names intact) and load it. Comma, semicolon and tab separated files all work: the separator is read from the header line. The header can say name, full name, or first name and last name; title, role or position; id, student id, employee id, staff id, member id or badge number; photo, picture, image or file name; and barcode. Case, spaces and punctuation in the header do not matter. Any other column is left off the badge and named under the stage. Every cell is printed as text, so an ID of 001 stays 001, but check your file first: a spreadsheet may already have dropped the leading zeros before the CSV was written.
- What size is a standard ID card?
- The common plastic card size is CR80, 85.60 by 53.98 mm, about 3.37 by 2.13 inches. This tool offers it wide or tall, plus 4 by 3 inch and 3 by 4 inch event badges and a custom size from 20 to 300 mm. Badges are centred on the sheet with at least 4 mm clear on every edge. With no gap, ten CR80 badges fit an A4 sheet, two across and five down with 19.4 mm margins at the sides and 13.55 mm at the top, and ten fit a Letter sheet too, with 4.75 mm at the top and bottom. On Auto the sheet is turned whenever that holds more badges, so four 4 by 3 inch badges fit on A4 and six on Letter.
- How do I print the back of the ID cards so it lines up with the front?
- Choose Long-edge flip or Short-edge flip under Duplex and pick the same setting in your print dialog. Turning a portrait sheet over its long edge swaps left and right, and turning it over its short edge swaps top and bottom, so the tool places each back at the mirrored position where its front will land. Printers do not always put the back exactly where they are told, so press Alignment test PDF, print it double-sided, then turn the sheet to its back, the way round that makes the Back labels read upright, and hold it to a light. Where a back cross sits to the right of the front cross showing through, type that distance as a negative Across offset, and where it sits lower, as a negative Down offset. Offsets go up to 10 mm either way and move every back on the sheet.
- Can I add photos and a barcode to the badges?
- Yes. Add photos takes many pictures at once. A row that names a file in its photo column gets that file, ignoring case and any folder path, and a name with no extension matches any extension. A row with an empty photo cell gets a file named after its ID, such as 002.jpg. The Photo button beside a row picks one picture for it and writes the file name into the CSV. Each photo is cropped to fill the photo box, centred across and kept toward the top, where a face usually is; for exact framing, crop it first. The barcode is Code 128, printed on the front or the back, and encodes either the ID or a barcode column. It holds printable ASCII only, and one that would need bars narrower than 0.254 mm to fit the badge is flagged.
- Is this a government ID card or an official ID template?
- No. It makes organization badges for staff, students, volunteers and events. There are no government-document templates and no security features, the tool never makes up an ID number, and it makes no claim that a badge is authentic. Apart from the word ID printed before an ID and the example the page opens with, every word and number on a badge is one you supplied: the organization, the label, the back text, and the names, titles, IDs and barcode values. The example is there so you can see a finished badge. While its organization name, or its back text on a duplex sheet, is still in place, a flag says so and export waits until you type your own or tick Print with these flags.
- What happens if a photo is missing or a name is too long?
- The badge still lays out, and the problem is flagged. A missing photo prints a grey placeholder. A long name or title is set smaller, or split over two lines when that keeps it noticeably larger, down to a smallest size; if it still does not fit, it is squeezed to the width and flagged. A row without a name, a repeated ID, a row with nothing to encode, and back text longer than the back holds are flagged too, and flagged badges get a dashed red outline on the preview. Export waits until you fix them or tick Print with these flags. A barcode value that Code 128 cannot hold has to be fixed in the CSV before anything exports.
- Are my photos and names uploaded anywhere?
- No. The CSV is read, the photos are decoded and the sheets are drawn and written into the PDF or PNG files here in the browser tab. Photos are kept in memory as copies of at most 900 pixels on the long side, which is 300 dpi across 76.2 mm, and they are gone when you close the page. This browser remembers the layout only: the organization, label, colour, badge size, paper and sheet settings, duplex, offsets, back text and the photo, barcode and outline switches. The names, IDs and photos are never stored. Save layout downloads the same settings as a file, and Load layout brings them back for the next batch.
Apart from the example the page opens with, badges carry only the organization, names, titles, IDs and photos you supply: the tool never makes up an ID number, has no government-document templates and makes no claim that a badge is authentic. While the example's organization name, or its back text on a duplex sheet, is still in place, export waits until you type your own or tick Print with these flags. Sheets are laid out in millimetres, a CR80 badge at 85.60 x 53.98 mm and ten to an A4 sheet, but your printer's scaling and duplex registration decide where the ink lands, so print at 100% and check one test sheet before a batch.