Using Autocrat to create personalized birthday cards

At the beginning of every school year, I usually spend hours writing out birthday cards for all of my students (close to 100). Today I tried the Google Sheets Add-on Autocrat for the first time to create personalized cards in minutes. Example:

Here are the instructions to do this:
(Click here to see the instructions in a Google doc.)

1. Install Chrome Sheets Add-on Autocrat.

2. Create a Google spreadsheet with student names, Class, birthdates, and age. Make sure to put headings on your columns. NOTE: If you don’t have this data, collect it from the students with a Google form which will give you a spreadsheet. NOTE 2: Very interestingly, the dates entered in French as below work fine in the merge, but in English, you can only enter numbers, as in "M/d/yyyy", "MMMM d, yyyy".

3. Create a template for your card in a Google Doc. (You might want to use a Google drawing first to insert an image and add a greeting like I did. Click here to see it. Then do a screenshot of it (or File > Download as > JPEG image) then insert into a Google doc.) 

Add merge tags below the image in your Google doc template like this:

(Click here for the original.) When you create the merge tags, use the fonts you want for the card. 

Templates for foldable cards:

- 1 fold, French

- 2 folds, French

- 1 fold, English

- 2 folds, English

NOTE: Autocrat will not work in a Google Drawing: only in a Google doc. 

4. Return to your spreadsheet and click on Add-ons > autoCrat > Launch:

5. Click on

6. Click on

7. Check off the template, then click “Select” at the bottom:

8. Name the merge job, then click “set”:

9. Next window, click “Save”:

10. Next window, under “File naming convention to use", type "Carte"

11. Click

12. Next window, click

13. If your list is long, it may take a couple of minutes to work. You will see the green bar advancing:

14. When it is done, you will see a link to the Google Doc birthday card for each of your students in your spreadsheet:

VOILA! Simply amazing!!!

Note: For quick printing, create a folder ahead of time to hold the documents to be printed. Call it "Cards to be printed". You might want to make sub-folders if you have more than one class. When you are setting up the merge (#10 above), click on "Advanced settings", then "Add folder". Scroll to the folder you created (it should be the first folder that comes up if you just made it).

Click on the folder, then, "Select". Then go back up to #11.

Once your merge is finished, open the folder with the merged documents. Select all the documents (press Shift button and click on first document, then click on last document). Right click, then "Download". A zip folder will be created. Drag it onto your desktop from your downloads. Open the zip folder to show the documents. Highlight them all, then right click, open with Preview (for pdf documents). Now click "File", then "Print".

15. Click here to learn how you can use Autocrat to email feedback immediately to students.