Seating Chart PDF Export Guide

What it does

The seating chart's Export button produces a 2-page PDF you can take straight to a print shop, hand to a venue coordinator, or print at home and prop on an easel at the entrance.

You don't have to manually arrange anything. Brunchie does the layout — chart, guest-by-table list, branded header — and the file lands in your downloads ready to go.

What's on the two pages

Page 1 — landscape, "easel poster"

The chart sits on the left, every guest grouped by table sits on the right. Side by side. This is the page guests look at when it's propped on an easel — they scan their name in the table list, look across to see where that table is on the chart, walk to the right spot.

Page 2 — portrait, "letter paper"

The chart on top, the table-and-guest list in two columns below. Standard letter-size, prints fine on any office printer. Useful for handouts, the day-of coordinator's clipboard, or a backup easel page if the printer didn't have landscape paper loaded.

Both pages share a branded BRUNCHIE header (event title, date, venue) and a generated-at footer so it's clearly your real chart and not a stale draft from two months ago.

How to do it

1. Open your hangout's Seating tab.
2. Click Export. (Big button, not buried — it's the obvious primary action.)
3. The PDF downloads. For most events that's the whole story.

For 200+ guest assignments, Brunchie builds the PDF in the background and sends you a notification when it's ready — your browser doesn't freeze and you don't sit there waiting on a spinner.

Print quality

The chart is captured at 300+ DPI on the embedded image, which means it survives being blown up to a 24×36 venue easel print without going pixelated. Empty seats render as faded em-dashes so the printed list reflects exactly what your chart shows on screen.

Paper size

Letter for US/Canada, A4 everywhere else. Brunchie auto-detects from your country setting.

If you want to override:

• ?paper=a4 on the URL — force A4
• ?paper=letter on the URL — force Letter

Useful for the rare case where your guests are in one country and your printer is in another.

The legacy exports

The old export options haven't gone away — they live in the More options menu (the three-dot button next to Export) so the print PDF stays the obvious primary action:

• Export Map (PNG) — the bare seating-chart image, watermarked. Good for sharing in a group chat or pasting into a slide.
• Guest list (XLSX) — the spreadsheet version. What you send to the caterer or coordinator who wants raw data.

Both are still there when you need them. The new PDF Export is just the one that ships ready-for-the-easel.

Workflow tips

Print at the print shop, not at home, for the easel poster. A 24×36 venue easel print at FedEx Office or Staples runs $20-30 and looks dramatically better than a cobbled-together set of letter pages taped together. Page 1 (landscape) is the one to upload.

Export late. Wait until the morning-of to download. Late changes — vendor plus-ones, no-shows, table reshuffles — happen, and the chart you printed three weeks ago is a stale chart.

Pair it with Presenter Mode → Seating. The PDF on the easel is the take-home / paper version; the TV is the live / always-current version. Run both. Some guests read paper, others read screens.

Don't re-import on the same chart unless you mean it. Re-importing on an existing chart wipes the existing tables and assignments before the new ones land. Duplicate the chart first, or export the PDF as a backup, before you re-import.

What it's not for

• Mid-event live updates — for that you want Presenter Mode → Seating, which updates on the TV as you reshuffle.
• Sending to vendors who only need raw data — they want the XLSX (in More options), not a glossy PDF.
• Sharing a "preview" of an unfinished chart — the PDF assumes the chart is final. Use the in-app share / external-cohost view-only role if you want a vendor to comment on the work-in-progress.

Related

• Seating Charts Guide — building the chart, importing from PDF, auto-assign
• Presenter Mode Guide — the live TV display version
• Print Your Seating Chart for the Easel — One Click — the use-case story