How do I turn a guest list into a seating chart?

Import the list, assign guests to tables, and the app checks occupancy against the real chair count on each table in the plan — so it can tell you when you have put eleven people on a ten-top.

The seating chart and the floor plan are the same data. A spreadsheet has no idea what you drew; this does.

Getting the list in

1. Open a diagram and choose Guest list & seating in the toolbar.
2. Paste or import a CSV — first name, last name, email, company, meal, table.
3. Map the columns if your export names them differently.
4. Assign guests to tables, or type straight into the grid for a short list.

Seeing the names on the plan

Turn on Names in the toolbar and every table shows its number and the guests sitting at it, drawn on the plan itself. It is off until you ask for it, because a room being set does not want it — and it follows into whatever you export, so the PDF you hand the banquet captain names the people rather than numbering the tables.

Guests are assigned to a table, not to a chair, so the block says who is at table 13 and does not invent where around it they sit. A table with more guests than the drawing has room to print says how many are missing rather than quietly leaving them off.

Meals and counts

Meal is a column, so chicken, fish and vegetarian counts are a glance rather than a formula — which is the number the kitchen asks for and the one most often wrong.

On the night

Check guests in as they arrive and you know who is in the space. Search filters the list as you type, which is the only feature that matters when somebody is standing in front of you at the door.