What to upload

Two files go in. Everything here is downloadable, so you can start from a working example rather than from a blank page.

1. Product file.xlsx or .csv — one row per product

2. Template PDFyour page design, with empty boxes

→

Finished catalogone PDF, products laid into the boxes

1. The product file 2. The template PDF 3. How pages are counted 4. What comes back 5. If it complains

1. The product file

A plain spreadsheet. Row 1 is the header row; every row after it is one product. Column order does not matter — the tool reads the header names, not the positions.

Download the .xlsx template Download the .csv version

Both are filled with 12 made-up products that really work — upload one straight back to see the tool run.

	A	B	C	D	E
1	Image URL	Name	Description	Price	Case Size
2	https://…/bolt.png	Hex Bolt M8 x 40	Zinc-plated steel, DIN 933	0.42	200
3	https://…/gloves.png	Nitrile Gloves, Blue	Powder-free, 4 mil, size L	6.90	100
4	https://…/tape.png	PTFE Thread Tape	12mm x 12m	0.85	50

The five columns

Column		What goes in it	Also accepted as
`Image URL`	required	A public link to the product photo. A photo on a white background works best — the tool trims the white away before placing it.	`Image`, `Photo`, `Image Src`, `Picture`
`Name`	required	The product name, printed under the photo. Two lines at most before the type starts shrinking.	`Product`, `Title`, `Item`
`Description`	optional	A short line under the name — spec, size, material.	`Desc`, `Details`, `Subtitle`
`Price`	optional	A bare number prints as £; a value already starting with `$`, `€`, `₹` and so on keeps its own symbol.	`Unit Price`, `Cost`, `RRP`
`Case Size`	optional	A bare number prints as 24 per case. Anything else — `24 x 500ml` — prints exactly as typed.	`Case`, `Pack`, `Pack Size`, `Quantity`

Optional really is optional. Leave out Description, Price or Case Size — or leave a single cell blank — and that line simply doesn't appear on the card. The photo takes the space instead.

Rules worth knowing

Header names are matched loosely — case, spaces, hyphens and underscores all fold together, so Image_URL and image url are the same thing.
Image URL must be a public http or https link that opens without signing in. A Google Drive or Dropbox share page is not an image link; a file path from your own computer will not work either, because your computer is not on the internet from here.
A product whose image fails to load still gets a card — name, description and price, with a small no image in place of the photo.
Completely empty rows are skipped, so gaps in the sheet are fine.
Up to 400 products per file. Split a bigger list and run it twice.
Saving as CSV from Excel is fine — commas, semicolons and Excel's odd encodings are all handled.

2. The template PDF

The template is your page design with the product boxes left empty — your header, your colours, your footer, and boxes where products should go. The tool renders the page, finds those boxes, and draws one product inside each of them. It never invents a layout: whatever you draw is what you get back.

There is no fixed grid to match. Three boxes across or five, one row or six, boxes of different sizes on the same page — the tool measures what is actually on your page. The two templates below are somewhere to start, not a shape you have to keep.

One-page template — the simplest option

If you want a grid of products with your branding on it, one page is enough. Whatever is on that page appears on every page of the finished catalog, so keep the header to something that bears repeating.

One page, 4 rows of 3. Twelve products per page.

The 12 sample products through it.

Download the one-page template

Two-page template — a cover, then a page that repeats

Use this when the first page should look different from the rest — a cover with room for a title, then a denser page that repeats for as long as the list needs.

Page 1 — the cover. Room for a title, so 3 rows instead of 4.

Page 2 — the one that repeats. No title, so it fits a row more.

The finished cover page: the title, then nine product cards below it. — The finished cover.

Download the two-page template

Both are A4. Open one in Illustrator, Canva, InDesign or Word, put your own artwork around the boxes, and export it back to PDF.

The rules a box has to follow

Draw it as a visible outline. The tool finds boxes by looking for their edges. A box implied by white space is invisible to it. Keep the outline at roughly the weight in the samples — a hairline can fall below what a page render picks up.
Leave it empty. A box counts only if it is drawn and still blank inside. That is deliberate: it is what stops a full-width banner or a dark footer strip from being treated as somewhere to put products.
Give it some size. Anything narrower than about a fourteenth of the page width, or shorter than about a twentieth of its height, is ignored — otherwise every underline and table cell on the page would be a candidate.
Any page size. A4, Letter, or something of your own. Boxes are found where they are, not where a template says they should be.
At most 12 pages. This is the page design to repeat, not the finished catalog.

3. How pages are counted

Products fill the boxes in reading order — left to right, top to bottom — and the template's pages are used in the order they appear. When the products outlast the template, the last page that has boxes on it repeats until they run out.

Your template	What comes back
1 page, 12 boxes, 30 products	3 pages of the same design. The last has 6 boxes filled and 6 left empty.
2 pages — a 9-box cover and a 12-box inner — with 30 products	The cover, then two of the inner page.
3 pages, 30 products	Pages 1 and 2 once each, then page 3 as many times as needed.
A page with no boxes at all, in the middle	Passes through untouched — a full-page photo or a divider stays where you put it, and holds no products.

4. What comes back

One PDF, downloaded straight to your device. Both pictures below are the sample product file run through a downloadable template, unedited — nothing was touched afterwards.

One-page template — twelve products, one page.

Finished catalog page 2: the repeating inner page with the remaining product cards. — Two-page template, page 2 — the remainder, on the page that repeats.

5. If it complains

What it says	What to change
The product file needs Image URL and Name in row 1…	Row 1 of the product file is not the header row, or those two headers are spelled in a way the tool does not recognise. Compare it with the downloadable template.
That product file is empty	The sheet has no rows at all, or the first sheet in the workbook is the empty one. Row 1 has to be the headers.
No products were found under the header row	The headers are right but every row below them is blank.
No product boxes were found in that template	The boxes are not drawn as visible outlines, something is filling them, or they are too small. Start from a blank template above and redecorate around the boxes rather than moving them.
That template PDF could not be read	The file is damaged or is not really a PDF. Re-export it from whatever drew it.
That template has N pages…	You have uploaded a finished catalog rather than the page design to repeat. A template is at most 12 pages.
That file has more than 400 products	Split the list and run it twice.
Photos are missing from the finished PDF	The image links could not be opened from the internet. Paste one into a private browser window — if it does not show a picture on its own, the tool cannot read it either.
Someone else's catalog is generating right now	Exactly what it says — one catalog is built at a time. Wait a minute and press the button again.