From guest list spreadsheet to seating chart

A seating chart needs less than a guest list does. Addresses, emails and meal choices can stay in the sheet. These are the columns worth having:

• A name, either one Name column or First Name and Last Name.
• A party or household column, so people who came together stay together.
• An RSVP column, so declines drop out on their own.
• Optionally, a side column (A, B or Both) and a tags or notes column.

Tablecharm matches these by header name, not by position, and it ignores columns it does not recognize. The import page lists every header it reads, including the common spellings.

The single most useful column is the one that groups people: Party, Household, Family or Group. Every row with the same value becomes one household, and a household always sits at the same table. In our sheet, the 100 attending guests fell into 38 parties, and the solver never split one.

If your sheet has one row per household with a partner or children in extra columns, the import reads those too, and a plus-one column adds a placeholder guest to that household. Rename any placeholders before printing; the print checklist counts them.

An RSVP column does real work. Tablecharm skips a row only when that column says the guest declined ("No", "Declined", "Regrets" and similar). A blank cell, "Pending" or "Maybe" keeps the guest in, because a missing answer is not a no.

That is why our import says "4 rows skipped": the four declined rows. The rows with no answer yet are seated, which is exactly what you want in a draft. The guide on starting before all RSVPs are in explains why.

If your sheet marks each guest's side, keep that column. Tablecharm reads A, B, Both (and "Partner A", "Partner B", "Mutual"), and the solver prefers not to mix the two families at a table unless guests are marked Both. It is a gentle preference, not a rule.

A Tags or Notes column works the same way as tags typed in the editor. Separate tags with commas, like "college, book club". Guests who share a tag lean toward the same table.

Wedding websites and spreadsheets all export CSV. There are step-by-step pages for Zola, The Knot, Joy and Google Sheets. One caution: the RSVP skip works on columns named RSVP, Status, Response or Attending, and The Knot and Joy exports use their own headings, so delete declined guests from those files before you import. Whatever the source, glance at the guest count after import. If it looks high, filter out declines in the sheet and import again.

If the same name appears twice, for example two guests called Rosie Honeywell, Tablecharm stops and asks whether they are two people or one repeated row before it adds them.