Printing a group of certificates using mail merge, Draw, and Writer

You've had a contest, or a class, or something where you want to give out certificates of recognition.

Normally you would do this in Draw.

But there are 435 people to give certificates to and darned if you're going to type in 435 names by hand when you already have the list of names in a spreadsheet. (Or some type of list.)

So here's what you do.
1. Create the certificate, maybe just download it off the Internet or else create or embellish your own certificate design in Draw and export it as a PNG graphic
2. Make the certificate graphic the background of a new landscape Writer document
3. Set up a mail merge with the spreadsheet of names as your data source
4. Drag in the Firstname and Lastname  from the data source into your Writer document and add any other text, like "Congratulations for Completing" and the date, course, or other information
5. And print

1. Create the certificate.

You can just google +certificate +image  or other parameters such as +free and find a lot. Try Google Images. You might not find something free but you might find something for a dollar that you can use again and again.

Download the image to your computer, then create a new Draw document and choose Insert > Picture > From File to bring the picture into the Draw document. Or just copy and paste it into a Draw document.

Make sure it's the right size, so choose Format > Page, Page tab, and select Landscape. Click OK. Then drag the corners of the document so that the picture fills the whole printable page space.

Make any changes you want to the graphic such as making it redder, making it gray scale, whatever. When you click on the graphic you get the options in the upper left corner of this drawing.

When it looks like you want it, select it and choose File  > Export. Select PNG and select Selection, and click Save.

When prompted for compression, choose 0.

2. Make the certificate graphic the background of a new landscape Writer document 

Create a new Writer document.

Choose Format > Page, Page tab. Make it Landscape, with the minimum page margins that your printer can handle. 

Then click the Background tab. Select Graphic instead of Color at the top, then browse to find the PNG file that you exported. Select Position. Click OK.

 

Make the document look the way you want and leave a space for the name.

 

Be sure to save the document.

3. Set up a mail merge with the spreadsheet of names as your data source
See this blog entry. You have the spreadsheet so create a database file that points to it.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/01/mail_merge_in_o.html

4. Drag the names onto the Writer document.

Continue the process in the blog by viewing your data sources (View > Data Sources or press F4) and select the data source you created, then expand it and select Table and the sheet name. Drag the field names (not the data but the headings of the fields) into the place on your Writer document where you want them.

http://openoffice.blogs.com/openoffice/2007/01/mail_merge_in_o.html

5. And print.
When you print, follow the printing instructions for mail merge. File > Print and when the message appears asking if you want to print a form letter, choose Yes.

Choose to print to the printer to print immediately, or (better) print to another Writer file first to see what it would look like. Then print that exported Writer file. To do this, choose File, then click OK.

When prompted for a file name, type something like printed_certificate_file  .

The files will print for a while. Then choose File > Open and open the the file you created, the printed_certificate__file. It will look something like this, with the real data in it.

Once you've done this once, you can use it over and over. Just put different data into the spreadsheet and the certificate document will draw that new data into the spreadsheet.

Comments

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[Andy Belak]

Dear Solveig,

Thank you for posting such helpful, step-by-step instructions. I have tried several times to create labels via a mail merge from a spreadsheet or database made from a spreadsheet and for some reason the nor fields data are pulled over.

Any idea why this might be? 1st name, last name, city, state 7 zip code all come over correctly and in the correct placement.

Thanks,
Andy