Every month the same documents get rebuilt by hand: the client contract that differs only in the name and the date, the training certificate repeated for thirty attendees, the invoice run for a whole order list. The copying is easy. The mistakes are not: a missed field here, a stale date there, and by row twenty nobody is checking anymore.
Batch Doc Maker is the tool I built to end that routine. You keep your data in Excel, you design the Word document once with placeholders, and the tool generates one finished document per row. This page explains how it works and where it fits.
What Batch Doc Maker does
At its core it is mail merge, the classic Word feature, reworked for batch jobs: you design a template with placeholders like {ClientName} or {InvoiceDate}, point it at an Excel sheet whose columns hold the matching values, and get one personalized document per row. It runs on Windows 7, 10 and 11.
Two things matter to me more than the feature list. First, everything runs locally on your machine. Your spreadsheet with client names and amounts never touches a server, and after the initial download the tool works with no internet connection at all. Second, the core workflow is free. You can generate real batches without paying or signing up for anything.
The workflow, step by step
1. Prepare the Excel sheet
Each row becomes one document, each column holds one piece of information. A certificate sheet might have Name, Course, Date and Instructor. Keep the first row as headers; the mapping screen reads them from there.
2. Mark up your Word template
Open your contract, invoice or certificate and replace the parts that change with placeholders matching your column names: {Name} where the participant’s name goes, {Date} where the course date belongs. The template editor can insert and rename placeholders for you, and the template library keeps each design reusable with a live preview.
3. Map columns to placeholders
This is the step worth slowing down for. The mapping screen shows real data from your sheet in every placeholder before anything is generated, so a wrong column pairing is obvious immediately. I would rather you catch a mismatched name here than in a signed contract.
4. Run the batch
One click starts generation. A progress bar tracks each document with its own status, and any file can be opened or exported on its own, so one odd row never forces you to rerun everything. For very large jobs, streaming export writes documents out one at a time and keeps memory use flat instead of loading the whole batch.
Where it fits
The pattern is always the same: a fixed document structure, changing details, and a list in Excel.
| Scenario | What one sheet produces |
|---|---|
| Contracts and agreements | A filled contract per client row |
| Invoices and receipts | One document per order |
| Certificates | A personalized certificate per attendee |
| Labels and envelopes | One label per address row |
| Notification letters | One letter per recipient |
If your case matches that shape, this tool covers it. If every document is genuinely different, a mail merge will not help and neither will this.
Cost and requirements
The free version covers the full workflow: batch generation, visual column mapping, the template library, and per-file export. The Pro upgrade is a one-time $19 payment for advanced automation and priority email support. No subscription, no feature timer.
One requirement to know about upfront: the tool needs the Microsoft Edge WebView Runtime, which ships with Windows 10 and 11 and can be installed free on older systems.
The short version
If you regularly turn spreadsheets into contracts, invoices, certificates or labels, set the template up once and stop retyping. The data stays on your machine, the batch takes minutes, and row forty gets the same care as row one.
You can download Batch Doc Maker free and run your first batch against a copy of your real data. Ten minutes will tell you whether it fits your paperwork.