Print Name Tags from Excel Without a Mail Merge

The mail-merge route from Excel to name tags works, but it's a lot of machinery for a stack of badges: a Word document, a linked data source, merge fields, and a preview that lies about fonts. The short route is copy the column, paste it, print the sheet.

What the mail merge actually involves

For the record, the traditional path: set up your spreadsheet with a header row, open Word, start a label merge, pick the Avery product number, select the workbook as the recipient list, insert the merge field into the first label, propagate it to the rest, preview, fix the fonts the preview didn't show you, and print a test page. Do it annually and you'll relearn a step every year — the process has real uses (hundreds of labels, many data fields), but eight badges isn't one of them.

The paste route

1. In Excel or Google Sheets, select the name column and copy it.
2. Open the Bulk Name Tag Generator and paste. One name per line — exactly what a copied column produces. A second column pasted alongside becomes the second line on each badge (role, table, company).
3. The names lay out on Avery 5395 sheets (8 badges per page, the standard 2⅓ × 3⅜ adhesive badge; inkjet twin 8395 is identical). Long names shrink to fit on one line, and badges in the same row keep a consistent size, so the batch looks like a set.
4. Print at 100% scale — not "fit to page" — onto the label sheet. No labels on hand? Toggle cut lines and use cardstock.

Why this beats the merge for badges specifically

• Fitting is the actual hard part. A merge puts "Alexandra-Konstantina" in the same 12pt as "Bo", and one of them wraps. Badge-aware layout shrinks the long name and keeps the sheet consistent.
• The roster changes at the last minute. Two late RSVPs mean re-running a merge; here they're two pasted lines and a reprint of one page.
• Nothing to configure. The label geometry is built in, at the published spec — no product-number picking, no template download.

Keep the mail merge for what it's good at: big multi-field jobs like address labels. For getting Tuesday's workshop roster onto badges, the copy-paste-print loop is a two-minute task.