Short answers to the questions teachers ask most.
In Google Sheets, choose Extensions → Gold Star → Open Gold Star. Any spreadsheet works. Many teachers keep one called “Gold Star awards”.
The home screen shows a four-step checklist: set up your school, add a class, design a certificate, give your first award. It takes about ten minutes once, then giving an award takes about a minute.
Open My classes. If your school uses Google Classroom, choose Import from Google Classroom and pick your class. Otherwise, paste a list of names and emails from a register, spreadsheet or email, one person per line.
Yes. Open the class and choose Edit beside a pupil, or paste a list with a second email on each line. That second email is saved as the parent’s.
For Classroom classes, open the class and choose Update from Google Classroom. Gold Star shows who joined and who left, and keeps anyone you added by hand. For other classes, add or remove people directly.
In My classes, open New school year? and choose Archive all classes. Then import or add this year’s classes. Archived classes are kept, and you can restore them.
Choose Design a certificate. Pick a type and a style (six standard styles, the Primary collection for younger children, or the Signature collection with Pro), add your school name, colours and logo once, and they’re used every time. The preview shows a real pupil’s name.
Choose the style My own design and upload it as a PNG or JPG, with space left for the name. Gold Star adds each name, reason and date on top.
Four premium designs (Heritage, Academy, Prestige and Executive), each in five colourways, with printed borders and a gold seal. They come with Teacher Pro and the School plan. You can try any of them in the preview on the free plan.
Yes. Choose the Primary tab in Design a certificate. The Primary collection (Superstar, Rainbow, Space, Garden and Party, each in Bright, Pastel or Ocean) is free on every plan, and there are awards such as Star of the Week, Kindness, Times Tables Champion, Super Writer and Star Helper.
The round crest at the top of a certificate. Choose Automatic to use your logo if you’ve uploaded one, or your school’s initials if not. You can also choose Logo, Initials (and type your own) or None.
Yes. Tick Ink saver in Design a certificate. Certificates get white backgrounds and fine lines instead of solid colour, and Gold Star remembers your choice.
Under the preview, choose Add to favourites. Your favourites, and the last designs you made, appear at the top of Design a certificate, with their colours and ink saver setting.
They do: Gold Star shrinks long names, titles and reasons so they stay inside the certificate.
Choose Give an award, pick the certificate and the class, tick who gets it, add a reason if you like, and press Create. Gold Star makes the certificates, emails them if you choose, and keeps a record.
For younger children, choose Parent: pupils’ school accounts often can’t receive outside email. For older pupils, choose Pupil, or Both.
After giving an award, choose Print these. You get one PDF with each certificate on its own page. Print it landscape with “Fit to page”.
Each name shows when they last had that award, and Gold Star tells you how many haven’t had it yet. Choose Show only them to see who’s due.
Yes. Choose Make certificates from a sheet or form, pick the response sheet and a template, and turn on Automatic. Each response is handled as it arrives.
Yes. Turn on Quiz results, choose the levels, and each person gets one certificate for their best score, filed in a folder per level.
Yes, with Pro. In Automatic, choose Every hour or Once a day. Gold Star makes certificates for any new rows, even when the sheet is closed, so rows added by hand or by other tools are covered too.
Yes. Turn on Design by column, choose a column (for example Year or Award), and pick a design for each value. Any other value uses the main template.
Yes. Type <<image:Photo>> in your template, where Photo is the column holding a link to the picture. In Slides the picture fills the box the tag is in; in Docs add a width, such as <<image:Photo|120>>. Web links work as they are. For pictures in Google Drive, choose Allow pictures from Drive in Edit settings and select them once. Slides and Docs can only copy in a picture they can open, so Gold Star shares each picture by link for a few seconds while it’s copied in, then removes the link. If your school’s Google settings don’t allow that, use web links instead.
Yes. Put the address in Bcc, in the Email section. Cc is shown to everyone; Bcc isn’t.
Choose Print pack. With a Slides template you get one PDF with each certificate on its own page. With a Docs template, or when rows use different designs, Gold Star joins the PDFs it has already made into one file, so choose Create for new rows first.
Yes. Gold Star finds your Autocrat jobs and imports them, and rows Autocrat already finished aren’t made again.
The free plan makes 50 certificates a month with the six standard designs, the Primary collection or your own, classes, awards, printing and email. Teacher Pro adds unlimited certificates, the Signature collection, quiz levels, automatic certificates from Google Forms, scheduled runs, certificate numbers, Word and image copies, and no “Made with Gold Star” line in emails. During the beta, everything is free.
At the bottom of the Gold Star home screen, choose Upgrade to Pro. That opens the pricing page with your Google account filled in, so your payment is matched to you. When you’ve paid, close and reopen Gold Star.
Everyone with an email address at your school’s own domain (for example name@stmarys.org) gets Pro automatically. If your school uses a shared email system such as C2k, Glow or Hwb, email us your staff list and we’ll add each teacher.
Email hello@goldstar.school from the address you paid with. You keep your plan until the end of the period you’ve paid for. Schools can pay by invoice or purchase order: just ask.
See making sure certificates reach inboxes. The quickest fix is choosing “Send a link instead” in the email settings.
The Status column on the sheet says why, in plain words. Fix it, then choose Retry failed rows. Nothing already made is repeated.
Email hello@goldstar.school. A real person replies, usually within one working day.