Affinity certificate workflow · Reviewed 23 October 2026

Find the failing step in your certificate batch.

First establish where the values become wrong: in the source records, the generated Affinity pages, the exported PDF or the separate filenames. Correcting the wrong stage can leave the original problem in place.

This guide focuses on one certificate per page in the current unified Affinity desktop workflow. It combines official documentation with practical checks. Older Publisher versions can have different controls. It is not a new native test or an extension of Kakulu’s narrow compatibility boundary.

Compare the stages before changing anything.

Work on a copy and keep the earlier batch separate. A PDF splitter can separate an existing document, but it cannot supply a missing name or repair a wrong recipient record.

The recipient field is missing or unresolved.

Check that the intended source is linked to the document and that the recipient column is present in that source. Insert a genuine data field into the text frame. Typing a heading such as recipient_name as ordinary text does not create a connection to the data.

The Data Merge panel documentation describes linking sources and generating a new document. Use the recipient CSV guide to check the record structure, then follow the current field-connection steps in the reusable layout guide.

If Preflight reports that a field was not found in its source, check whether a relevant row or column was renamed or deleted. Affinity documents that condition separately from source-reading errors. Restore or deliberately rebind the intended field, then inspect the new generated document.

Source: Affinity Preflight. A missing-field report does not by itself identify one universal fix. Kakulu’s exporter reads resolved text from an already-generated document; it does not perform the merge.

Old or unexpected records appear.

Compare a recognisable ID and name in the source with the data preview and the generated pages. Affinity’s Preflight guidance describes a source-needs-updating message when external records change. Resolve that warning before preparing the intended batch.

Keep the reusable template and its generated output distinct. Data Merge generates a new document. After changing the source or template, make sure you are inspecting the intended newly generated document, rather than a previously exported batch.

For missing or extra certificates, review the source records and any intentional filtering or record selection before comparing page counts. For this guide’s simple one-record-per-page workflow, six intended records should yield six certificate pages. That expectation does not apply to every possible Data Merge layout.

Read the specific source warning.

Official Preflight documentation distinguishes problems opening or parsing a source, errors in a Data Viewer script, and warnings raised by validation rules. Inspect the corresponding source or viewer message. Do not assume that every warning is an encoding problem or that changing a CSV delimiter will fix every merge.

If you change a source column name, update its field connections deliberately. If you change record order after producing a combined PDF, keep any separate filename list aligned with that PDF.

A name is clipped, substituted or misspelled.

Compare the same recipient at three points: source text, the generated Affinity page and the saved PDF. This separates a source spelling problem from a layout or export problem.

• Incomplete long name: inspect the actual generated frame and its available space. Adjust the template deliberately and regenerate the affected batch. Hiding overflow clips text; it does not make the name fit.
• Missing accent or unexpected character: compare the source characters with what the selected font can display. Check missing-glyph and font-substitution information as well as the source file’s encoding.
• Different appearance in the PDF: open the saved file and compare the name, font and layout with the generated page. Review the chosen PDF preset and destination requirements before repeating the export.

The Font Manager guidance explains missing fonts and substitutions; the Text Frame panel guide explains Hide Overflow. Neither a clean filename nor a successful export message proves that the full name is visible.

Example check: the supplied sample includes Zoë Ng and José Alvarez. Inspect the accented characters in the PDF, not only in the filename. Their success in that six-record example does not verify every font, language or template.

For a repeatable pass through short, long, wide and accented names, use the certificate name-fit guide. It explains when to change frame space, wrapping or typography while preserving the approved name.

The PDF has too few pages or contains spreads.

Check the document you exported and the Area and Pages settings. Affinity documents these different choices:

• Current Page / Current Spread limits the export to the current page or spread.
• All Pages / All Spreads includes the relevant pages or spreads, subject to a specified Pages range.
• Pages can restrict the selected output to a range.

For a combined PDF intended for one-certificate-per-page splitting, inspect the exported PDF and confirm that each PDF page contains exactly the intended certificate. A facing-page spread and an individual page are different output units.

Use Affinity’s official export dialog reference for the controls available to your document and format. Do not redesign a correct document merely because the selected export area was wrong. These general settings do not make facing-page spreads compatible with Kakulu’s preview.

If the pages are right but the file is too large, fonts change or a printer rejects it, use the PDF destination and settings guide to isolate the output requirement before changing your template.

There are six pages, but only one file.

A PDF can contain many pages. Selecting pages for export determines the content of that export; it does not by itself supply a separately named file for every recipient.

Choose a finishing route that matches your starting point:

• Small occasional batch: the manual export route can be sufficient.
• Correct combined PDF: a free splitting and naming tool may finish the job without changing the Affinity template.
• Repeated compatible Affinity workflow: inspect the proposed native route and its setup tradeoffs.

Page, artboard and slice workflows are not interchangeable. This guide does not claim that Slice Studio cannot export PDFs; it also does not present an untested artboard workaround as a solution for an existing certificate merge.

A correct certificate has the wrong filename.

First identify where the filename came from. A separate CSV/list can depend on row order; a text-extraction tool can depend on the selected text regions and layout. Neither should be judged only by the number of output files.

SheetRender documents row-order naming. If rows C003 and C004 in a filename list are swapped after the PDF is generated, those two files can be named for the wrong people even though there are still six names and six pages.

See the constructed wrong-pairing example. It demonstrates the logic of a possible mismatch; it is not a reported competitor bug or a result from a Kakulu test.

PDF Split & Rename documents selected-text naming, previews, editable filenames and saved settings. With that approach, review the actual extracted ID/name if the layout changes. It does not inherently need a second CSV.

If two people share a name, use their certificate IDs to distinguish them. The example’s two Alex Rivera files must contain C001 and C002 respectively. Follow the delivery checklist after correcting the mapping.

The Kakulu preview stops.

Use the version-specific error table for the exact diagnostic. It covers the required name/ID frames, unresolved values, unsupported layouts, permissions, existing destinations and partial exports.

Keep diagnostics and any partial output separate from a finished batch. The preview’s local guards do not establish that a particular PDF contains the right certificate. Do not edit the script to work around a document condition without understanding what failed.

The development target remains Affinity 3.3.1.4940 on macOS, with the exact document restrictions in the compatibility table. Windows, iPad, Affinity V2, artboards and other unsupported layouts are not added by this general troubleshooting guide.

Compare with the original synthetic example.

The six original native PDFs let you inspect a known example of the intended outcome. They contain fictional recipients and were independently checked after the original probe export. They do not prove that the reconstructed preview, a changed template or another build will produce the same result.

Open any of the six individual sample PDFs and their expected mappings, or download the complete example below.

This is an example-output download, not a public exporter release. No email is required.

Sources and verification limits.

Kakulu · reviewed 23 October 2026. Affinity Help Center articles are undated. Official indexed text was used where a direct page returned navigation without the article body. These are documented controls and practical diagnostic checks, not a newly operated native walkthrough. Competitor capabilities are documentation claims; no new file-processing result or timing is claimed here. The existing version-by-version evidence record remains unchanged.

1. Affinity — Data Merge panel — checked 23 October 2026.
2. Affinity — Preflight — checked 23 October 2026.
3. Affinity — export dialog — checked 23 October 2026.
4. Affinity — managing fonts — checked 23 October 2026.
5. Affinity — Text Frame panel — checked 23 October 2026.
6. SheetRender — row-order naming for a merged PDF — checked 23 October 2026.
7. PDF Split & Rename — documentation and source — checked 23 October 2026.