Education workflow
Graduation Certificate
Turn one Google Sheets roster into a finished graduation certificate per learner, exported as named PDFs in your cohort folder. Portant data merge fills your Google Slides design and output management handles the file names and sequential certificate numbers.
~5 min setup · Used by 100+ teams
Trusted by 40,000+ teams
Overview
Generate graduation certificates in Google Slides from a Google Sheet
Ceremony season means hundreds of nearly identical certificates with one tiny change per recipient. An admin opens the master deck, duplicates the slide once per learner, retypes the name and award line, then exports the whole thing as a PDF and renames the files by hand. One late withdrawal at 9pm the night before and the cycle starts again.
Portant turns each row in your Google Sheets roster into a finished Google Slides certificate. Data merge fills the recipient name, course, completion date, and certificate number from the row, while output management names every PDF and saves it to your cohort folder in Drive. Add an email step and email tracking confirms which graduate opened the message.
This one suits school administrators preparing graduation packs, training managers running corporate cohorts, and course creators issuing certificates of completion for online programmes. Pair the same row with your Google Sheets setup so the roster you already maintain drives every certificate the team issues.
Who is this for
Is this template right for you?
Teams who generate documents from structured data.
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200 certificates ready in under 10 minutes. Data merge fills every name, course, and certificate number from the recipient sheet in one batch, so a cohort of 200 finishes faster than a coffee break.
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Every PDF named and filed without thinking. Output management writes each certificate with the recipient name and ID, then drops it into a cohort folder, so reissues take seconds the next time a graduate asks.
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Proof every graduate received their certificate. Email tracking shows when each recipient opens the message, so you can resend a missing certificate the same day rather than weeks after the ceremony.
Setup
How to set up the graduation certificate workflow
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Step 1: Build your recipient sheet
Open Google Sheets and add one row per recipient with columns for full name, course or programme, completion date, instructor, and an optional certificate number. Use clean headers because Portant will map them to your Slides tags.
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Step 2: Lock the Slides master design
Design the certificate once in Google Slides with crests, signatures, and gold borders fixed in place. Drop merge tags like {{Name}}, {{Course}}, and {{CertID}} where the personalised text should appear.
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Step 3: Connect the sheet and the deck in Portant
Open Portant, link the recipient sheet and the Slides master, then map each merge tag to its column. Preview a few rows to check that long names still fit on the line before the full run.
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Step 4: Set output rules and run the batch
In output management, name every PDF by recipient (for example {{Name}}_{{CertID}}.pdf), pick a cohort folder in Drive, and add an email step if you want each graduate to receive their certificate automatically.
Frequently asked questions
Open Google Slides, design the certificate once with your school crest, borders, and signatures fixed in place, then drop merge tags like {{Name}}, {{Course}}, and {{Date}} where the dynamic text belongs. Portant maps every tag to a column in your Google Sheets roster and fills 200 certificates in one run.
A graduation certificate should include the recipient's full name, the awarding institution, the programme or course completed, the completion date, the names and signatures of the issuing authorities, and a unique certificate number. Portant pulls every one of those fields from your Google Sheets row and merges them into the locked Slides design.
List every recipient as one row in Google Sheets with the fields you want on the certificate, then connect the sheet and your Slides master in Portant. Run the workflow once and Portant generates a personalised certificate per row, exports each as a named PDF, and saves the batch to a cohort folder in Drive.
Yes. Add an email step to the workflow with the recipient's address pulled from a Google Sheets column, and Portant attaches each named PDF certificate to its own message. Email tracking then shows when every graduate opens the message, so you can resend a missing certificate without waiting for a complaint.
Store the certificate number in its own column in your Google Sheets roster (such as 2026-001, 2026-002), then map that column to a {{CertID}} merge tag in your Google Slides master. Output management can also reuse the same value to name each PDF, so the file name and the on-certificate number always match.
Yes. The same Google Sheets and Slides pattern handles course completion, training, attendance, and award certificates because the workflow is driven by your roster, not the certificate type. Swap the master design and column headers to fit each programme, and Portant generates the batch the same way for 50 trainees or 5,000.
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