That is the whole job this page does: rows in, individually named PDF files out — without Word, macros, or a convoluted export chain.
How it works
1
Drop your spreadsheet
Drag a .xlsx or .csv onto the tool. It is parsed right here in the browser tab — nothing is transmitted anywhere.
2
Check the rows it found
The tool shows how many data rows it read. On Pro, set a filename pattern like {Client}.pdf so every file is named from your own columns.
3
Generate and download
One PDF per row. More than one file arrives as a zip, with each PDF also available individually.
A worked example: 12 clients, 12 named PDFs
Say your file is clients.xlsx — 12 data rows under a header row, with columns Client, Address, and Balance. One run produces 12 one-page PDFs, each laying out that row's values under clear column labels, plus a zip holding all of them.
Free run: files arrive as row-1.pdf through row-12.pdf.
Pro run with the pattern {Client}.pdf: files arrive as Acme Interiors.pdf, Bergman & Co.pdf, and so on — named from the Client column, ready to attach or file without renaming a single one.
The same run works from a .csv export, and at 12 rows it is entirely inside the free tier.
Constraints & edge cases
How are the PDF files named?
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The default is row-1.pdf, row-2.pdf, and so on. Pro unlocks custom filename patterns with tokens: {n} for the row number and {Column Name} for any column's value — so {Client}.pdf names each file after that row's Client cell. If the cell a pattern points at is empty, the filename falls back to the row number instead of producing a blank name, and duplicate names are deduplicated as "name (2).pdf".
What does "free up to 20 rows" mean exactly?
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Runs are unlimited and there is no signup. Each generate run covers the first 20 data rows free — the header row does not count. If your file has more, you can generate the first 20 free or upgrade to Pro ($12/mo) for unlimited rows per run.
Which fonts do the PDFs use? What about accents and other alphabets?
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PDFs use the built-in PDF standard font (Helvetica) — no font downloads, so generating a PDF makes no network request of any kind. Western European accents (é, ü, ñ, ç) render fine. Characters outside that range — Polish ł, Cyrillic, Greek, Chinese — are replaced with ? in this version, so check a one-row test file first if your data uses them.
What page size do the PDFs come out at?
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US Letter portrait (8.5 × 11 in). There is no page-size picker in this version — if you print on A4, standard printer scaling handles the small mismatch, but the layout is designed for Letter.
Can it handle 1,000+ rows? Where is the limit?
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The file intake caps at 100 MB, with a 50 MB per-file processing guard — a file large enough to lock up the tab is refused with a clear message instead of being attempted. Generated PDFs are held in memory until you download them, so runs of several thousand rows depend on your machine's RAM. For very large jobs, split the master file by column first and run per group.
Does my spreadsheet get uploaded?
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No. Parsing and PDF generation both run in your browser. There is no upload step and no server that could keep a copy — open the network tab while you run it and watch for yourself.
My file is .xls, not .xlsx — will it work?
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Legacy .xls files are not readable in this version. Open the file in Excel, save it as .xlsx, and drop it again — the tool tells you exactly this if you try.
How to mail merge to individual PDFs, by hand
Word's mail merge is the standard answer, and it does almost all of this well. The gap — and it is the entire reason this query has thousands of unresolved forum threads — is the very last step: Word will not save one PDF per record.
Word mail merge, then splitTwenty minutes for the merge, then the split problem
1In Word, go to Mailings → Start Mail Merge → Letters.
2Choose Select Recipients → Use an Existing List and pick your Excel file.
3Insert your merge fields into the document where each value should appear.
4Preview Results to check a few records, then choose Finish & Merge → Edit Individual Documents.
Where it breaks. You get one long Word document with every record separated by section breaks — not one file per record. Exporting that to PDF gives you a single large PDF. There is no built-in option anywhere in Word that produces separate files, which is exactly where the forum threads stop.
A VBA macro to split the mergeAn hour or two, and it is the route most threads eventually recommend
1After merging to a new document, open the Visual Basic editor in Word.
2Loop over the document's sections, copy each into a fresh document, and call ExportAsFixedFormat to write it as a PDF.
3To name the files usefully, read the merge data separately and build each filename from a column — this is the part people underestimate.
Where it breaks. The naive version names files Doc1.pdf, Doc2.pdf and so on, which is useless when you have to send them to named people. Building real filenames means sanitising column values for characters Windows rejects, and handling duplicates — two clients called J. Smith will overwrite each other silently unless you code around it.
A paid Word add-inMinutes, for a licence fee
1Install a merge-tools add-in that adds a 'merge to individual documents' command to the ribbon.
2Run the merge as normal, then use the add-in's split-and-name command.
Where it breaks. It works, and for many people it is a reasonable purchase. It is Windows-Word only, it is another install to get past IT, and your data has to be on the machine with the licence on it.
Windows and Mac
Windows. Full mail merge, full VBA, and the add-in ecosystem all exist here.
Mac. Word for Mac's mail merge is a reduced version — the Mail Merge Manager is a different interface, several data-source options are missing, and the merge-tools add-ins that solve the split problem on Windows are not available at all. On a Mac, the VBA route is usually the only option.
Word does the merge well. What it has never done is write one named file per row, and every manual answer to that is either a macro you maintain or a Windows-only paid add-in.