Automation Walkthrough

The script reads participant names from a Google Sheet, creates a copy of a certificate template in Google Slides, replaces the placeholder text with each participant’s name and details, then exports each certificate as a PDF into a designated Drive folder. No external tools. No paid add-ons. Everything runs inside your existing Google Workspace.

Open Google Sheets. Column A: full name. Column B: designation or role (optional). Column C: date of training. One row per participant. That’s your data source.

Open Google Slides. Design your certificate on a single slide. Where the participant's name should go, type the placeholder . For the date, use . For the role, use . Style it however you want. This slide is your template.

In Google Drive, create a new folder called “Certificates” (or whatever you prefer). Copy the folder ID from the URL. You’ll need it in the script.

In your Google Sheet, go to Extensions > Apps Script. Delete any existing code. Paste in the script below. Update the three IDs: your template Slides ID, your Sheet ID, and your output folder ID.

Click Run. Authorise when prompted (first time only). Watch your Certificates folder fill up with PDFs. One per participant. Done.

This is normal on the first run. Google needs your permission to access Sheets, Slides, and Drive. Click through and approve.

Check your Sheet. Make sure Column A starts at row 2 (row 1 is the header). No empty rows in between.

Make sure your template uses exactly , , and , curly brackets included, no extra spaces.

Add a column to your Sheet, add a matching placeholder to your template (e.g. ), and add one more replaceAllText line to the script. Or ask an AI tool to do it for you.

If you have Excel installed on your desktop, any version, there’s an automation engine already built in. It’s called VBA (Visual Basic for Applications), and it’s been there since the 1990s. Every desktop installation of Excel has it, from the oldest version in your office to the latest Microsoft 365 desktop app.

To use it, you open the Visual Basic Editor (VBE) from inside Excel. And this is where most people stop. The VBE looks like it was designed for programmers. It wasn’t designed for anyone, honestly. It just hasn’t been updated since 2003. Behind that dated interface is a five-step process: open, paste, run, done.

Here’s the thing that changes everything: you don’t need to write VBA. You describe what you want to Claude or Gemini, get the script, paste it into the VBE, and press Run. The AI writes the code. You just press the button. Same pattern as everything else in this book: AI handles the packaging, you handle the judgment.

In Excel, go to File > Options > Customize Ribbon. On the right side, tick the “Developer” checkbox. Click OK. This only needs to be done once, ever.

Click the Developer tab, then click “Visual Basic.” Or just press Alt + F11. That’s the shortcut. Memorise it and you’ll never need the Developer tab again.

In the VBE, go to Insert > Module. A blank white window appears. This is where your code goes. That’s it. That’s the scary part. A blank white window.

Paste the code (from the AI or from below). Press the green Play button, or hit F5. Watch it work.

When saving, choose “Excel Macro-Enabled Workbook (.xlsm)” instead of the normal .xlsx. This preserves the code inside the file so you can reuse it.

Every month, you receive raw data in a spreadsheet. Every month, you spend an hour formatting it: bold headers, column widths, borders, number formats, freeze panes. Every month, the same ritual. This macro does it in two seconds.

The same certificate automation as the Apps Script version above, but for Microsoft Office. This macro runs from inside Excel desktop and controls Word in the background: it reads names from your spreadsheet, opens a Word certificate template, replaces the placeholders, and exports each one as a PDF. Both Excel and Word need to be installed on the same machine.

This means your security settings are blocking the script. Go to File > Options > Trust Center > Trust Center Settings > Macro Settings. Select “Disable all macros with notification,” so Excel asks you each time rather than silently blocking everything.

This means Word isn’t installed or isn’t accessible. The certificate script needs both Excel and Word on the same machine.

Make sure the output folder exists before running. VBA won’t create folders for you. And use full paths with backslashes, not forward slashes.

Copy the entire script into Claude or Gemini. Say: “Explain what each section does, then help me change [specific thing].” You don’t need to learn VBA. You need to learn how to ask.