Our fourth and final lesson in the Name List Workshop deals with cleaning up the small things to make your name lists as accurate as possible.
One thing many people might not realize affects the placement of your names on the badges. These are extra spaces between names or even after names. If there are extra spaces after the names, when we copy and paste those spaces get copied as well and are counted as characters. This will throw off the centering of the name (or title) on the badge. There is a quick and easy way to check your name lists for extra spaces that don’t need to be there.
If you are working with your name list in Excel, you’ll need to copy each column one at a time and then “Paste Special” – “Unformatted Text” into Word. We suggest only checking one column at a time to avoid any confusion. If your name list is already in Word then you’re one step ahead!
Once you’re in Word you’ll head up to your menu bars and click the icon that “shows” formatting.
Your name list should now look similar to this:
Each of the small dots represents a space. The arrow pointing to the right represents a {tab}. At the end of each line you see the paragraph symbol showing where the {enter} key has been used to start a new line. When you are cleaning your name list, you’ll want to remove all spaces at the end of the name, leaving only the paragraph symbol. You’ll also take out all but one space between the names (unless you prefer having two spaces between each name).
Once you’re done your name list should look like this:
All that’s left is to copy your list, open Excel, “Paste Special” and choose “Text”. This will paste your name list into Excel without any strange formatting errors.
There are other small things to keep in mind when formatting your name lists. Remember that we aren’t concerned about the font in your name list; that will be adjusted in the artwork. The case that your names are in, however, is important. So if you want your names to be all in CAPS make sure that your name list is formatted in that way.
We copy and paste directly from the list that you send us to avoid any errors, but that also means that we produce your name lists exactly as you send them to us. That’s why we decided to do the Name List Workshop, to help you learn quick tricks and formatting techniques to help you get those name lists exactly as you and your clients need them produced.
And that brings us to the end of our Name List Workshop! We hope that you’ve found these lessons helpful! Let us know if you have any questions or any other tricks that you’d like to share with everyone by leaving us a comment here or catching us on Facebook or Twitter!
Tags: badge, customer service, format, list, name badge, name list, name tag, promotion