How to bulk create certificates in Canva, and what comes next
Canva's Bulk Create turns a participant list into certificates in minutes. Here is how it works, and the three things you still do by hand afterwards.
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Canva is a good place to design a certificate. You get templates, fonts and your own colours, and with Bulk Create you can turn a participant list into one certificate per person in a few minutes. This guide shows how that works and what you still have to do by hand afterwards.
What you need before you start
Bulk Create works on desktop web and in the Canva desktop app for Canva Pro, Teams, Business, Enterprise, Education and Canva for Nonprofits. Canva Free is not on that list.
You also need a participant list. Canva accepts a Canva Sheet, a CSV or XLSX file, data from a connected app, or a table you type in yourself. Keep it simple: one column per field (name, course, date) and one row per participant. Each row becomes one certificate.
How to bulk create certificates in Canva
- Open or design your certificate. Use a separate text box for each field that changes, for example one for the name and one for the date.
- Click the page background, select Edit in the toolbar and choose Bulk create. You can also find it under Apps.
- Select Upload data and pick your CSV or XLSX file. If the file has several sheets, choose the right one.
- Select Match and fill fields. Canva connects the columns it recognises to text boxes in your design. Check every match and fix the ones that are wrong.
- Select Preview and click through a few certificates. Long names are the usual problem, so look for text that runs over the edge.
- Open More options next to Create designs and pick the output: one design with a page per participant, or a separate design for each row.
- Select Create designs. Canva saves the result in your Projects.
- Download as PDF. On Pro, Teams, Education and Nonprofit plans you can turn on Download pages as separate files under Advanced settings and get a zip with one PDF per page.
For a group of 20 or 30 people this is quicker than formatting certificates in a word processor, and the result looks good.
Where Canva stops
Canva's job ends when you have the files. A training company usually needs a few more things, and that is where the manual work comes back.
Nobody gets an email. Bulk Create makes designs, and sending them is up to you. You attach each PDF to an email to the right person, or upload the files somewhere and share links one at a time.
Nobody can check that a certificate is genuine. A PDF from Canva has no verification page behind it. If an employer wants to confirm that someone really finished your course, they have to contact you, and you have to look it up.
A typo means doing it again. If a name is misspelled, you edit the design, download the file again and send a new email with an apology. Three corrections on the same day means three rounds of the same job.
Canva is a design tool, and it does design well. The gap is what happens once the design is done.
The next step: Diplino
Diplino picks up where the file ends. You set your logo and colours once, upload your participant list as a CSV file, and every participant gets a personal certificate by email. Each certificate has its own verification page and QR code, so anyone can check that it is real without asking you. Diplino also sends an automatic reminder to participants who have not opened their certificate, and shows you which emails bounced or were not opened so you can resend them.
If a name is wrong, you correct it and resend. That does not use up a certificate, because Diplino has no fee per certificate. Certificates, emails and the verification page can be in nine languages, which helps if you train people in several countries. Data is hosted in the EU, and a DPA comes with every plan.
The easiest way to start is with the design. You can make as many free sample certificates as you like to see how yours will look. Samples carry a watermark and cannot be verified, so they are only for testing. When you are happy with it, the Free plan includes 10 real certificates, and paid plans start at 12 EUR a month billed annually.
Try the design free with a sample certificate
Which one should you use?
For a handful of printed certificates at a one-off event, Canva on its own is fine. If you run courses regularly and want every participant to receive their certificate by email, with a way for others to verify it, keep Canva for your marketing material and let a certificate tool handle the issuing.