This guide is for course providers who issue certificates by hand: to one learner, to everyone on a course at once, or a second certificate for the same person. It also explains how to resend, share and revoke a certificate. To have certificates issued automatically when learners complete a course, see Set Up Automatic Certificates for a Course.
Registration: one person’s place on a course or course date. Certificates are issued to Registrations.
Order Contact (primary contact): for a Registration that came from an Order, the person shown as Order Contact on that Order. It can be someone other than the learner, such as the booker. A Registration added directly or imported without an Order has no Order Contact.
A Course Owner or Facilitator can work with Registrations, and their certificates, within their course or date access. The main Registrations and Contacts pages need a System Admin.
Issue a Certificate to One Learner Manually
Before issuing: if this learner has places on different courses within the same Order, ask Cademy Support to confirm the intended course before issuing or reissuing individually. An individual issue can select another eligible course on that Order; choosing a template does not select the course.
Open the course’s Registrants tab, or the main Registrations page as a System Admin. Open the learner’s Registration, check the course and date, then expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD.
Select Issue Certificate.
If Template appears, keep the course template (marked Course Template) or select Cademy Default or another active custom template. This chooses a design, not a different course.
Email the certificate to the participant starts ticked. Leave it ticked to email the learner and, for a Registration from an Order, the Order Contact. Clear it to issue without any email.
Select the final Issue Certificate.
Refresh the Registration and check the certificate’s template, issue date, expiry and status. Use Issued > View to check the PDF.
Example of the Issue Certificate window, with the course template selected and the email box ticked.
Template appears only when Custom Certificates are available. Without it, Cademy uses the course’s template or the Cademy default certificate.
With the email box ticked, the learner is emailed if they have a saved email address, and the Order Contact is notified if the Order and that Contact still exist and the Contact has an email address. If both are the same address, one email is sent. If emailing is disabled for your account, the window shows Emailing is disabled: the certificate is still issued, but no email is sent.
What the Issued Menu Does (View, Copy, Resend and Revoke)
After a certificate is issued, the Registration lists it with its template, issue date, expiry date or Never, and status. Its Issued menu has:
View: opens the certificate PDF in a new tab.
Copy: copies a link to this certificate.
Resend: emails this certificate to the learner again.
Revoke: revokes this certificate straight away, with no confirmation. See Undo Certificates Auto-Issued by Mistake.
Send the Certificate to a Learner Who Completed Online Training but Cannot Download It
Open the learner’s Registration and expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD. If no certificate is listed, none has been issued yet: issue one as above, or see “Learner Can't Get a Certificate After Completing the E-Learning” in Set Up Automatic Certificates for a Course for why it was not issued automatically. If a certificate is listed, email it to the learner again as below.
Email a Certificate to One Learner Again (Resend)
Open the learner’s Registration and expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD.
Open the certificate’s Issued menu and select Resend.
Check the message Certificate sent to followed by the email address.
Resend emails only the learner, not the Order Contact. It cannot be selected when the learner has no email address (This student has no email address) or emailing is switched off for your account (Emailing is switched off for this account; see Why Is Emailing Disabled or Blocked on My Account?). To send the certificate from your own email instead, use Copy and paste the link.
Undo Certificates Auto-Issued by Mistake (Revoke a Certificate)
Revoking cancels a certificate. Its link stops working and the learner can no longer open it from their course page. Emails already sent and PDFs already downloaded are not recalled.
If automatic issuing caused it, turn that off first. Open the course’s Settings > Certificates & CPD, turn off Automatically issue certificate and save. While it is on, a later completion check can issue a revoked certificate again, without an email.
Open the learner’s Registration from the course’s Registrants tab and expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD.
Check the template, learner and course. A certificate can be shared across Registrations for the same learner and course on one Order. Revoking it here also affects those Registrations, without a confirmation. Open the certificate’s Issued menu and select Revoke. It is revoked straight away and Certificate revoked appears.
Refresh and check that the certificate shows Revoked. Repeat for each learner: there is no bulk revoke.
You can also use the three-dot Registration actions menu: Revoke Certificate… or Revoke Certificate & CPD…. It asks for confirmation, then revokes the latest active certificate and the Registration’s CPD award, if it has one, even when the menu names only the certificate. If the confirmation shows This certificate is shared, the same certificate belongs to the learner’s other Registration for this course on the same Order and is revoked there too. For CPD awards, see Set Up and Award CPD Points or Hours.
Revoking does not change Completion, attendance or lesson progress. To restore a certificate later, open its Revoked menu and select Issue Certificate or Issue & Email. This acts at once and restores the original certificate with its template and issue date; current expiry settings apply.
Missing Certificate for a Second Attendee Whose Details Weren't Given
When a booker buys several places but gives details for only some attendees, the other places are unnamed spaces on the order. An unnamed space has no Registration, so it cannot be marked as attended or get a certificate.
Open the order from Orders.
Beside the unnamed space, select Assign… and add the attendee’s details. See Change an Existing Order.
Mark the attendee’s attendance for the course date, as in Mark Attendance for a Course Date or Session.
Otherwise, issue the certificate as in Issue a Certificate to One Learner Manually.
Once the attendee is assigned, they have their own Registration. With automatic issuing enabled, their certificate is issued when all completion requirements are met, as for any other attendee. Blended courses with published lessons need both full attendance and 100% lesson progress. It can take a moment for the new attendee to appear on the course’s Registrants tab.
To collect every attendee’s details at booking, see Collect Details for Every Attendee or Only the Booker.
Learner Can Download Only One of Their Two Certificates
On the learner’s course page, Get Certificate opens only their most recently issued active certificate. The booker’s Get Certificate on the participant list does the same. So when a Registration has two certificates, the learner can open only one of them there.
To give them the other one, open the Registration, then open that certificate’s Issued menu and select Resend, or Copy to send its link yourself. Each copied link opens its own certificate. For the learner’s own steps, see Find or Download Your Course Certificate.
Issue a Second Certificate to the Same Learner
Use this when one learner needs different certificates for the same course, such as an attendance certificate and an accredited certificate. It needs Custom Certificates.
One Registration, several certificates: each active certificate must use a different template. Issuing another certificate adds it without replacing the ones already there.
Issue Another Certificate for One Learner
Read Before issuing in Issue a Certificate to One Learner Manually first.
Open the learner’s Registration from the course’s Registrants tab, or the main Registrations page as a System Admin, and expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD.
Select Issue Another.
Under Template, choose a different active custom template or Cademy Default.
Leave Email the certificate to the participant ticked to send it, or clear it to issue without any email.
Select Issue Certificate, then reopen the Registration and check that both certificates are listed.
The same active template cannot be issued twice. A template already used by an active certificate is marked Already issued. If the matching certificate was revoked, reissuing restores it instead of creating another copy.
Issue an Additional Certificate in Bulk
Follow Issue Certificates to Everyone on a Course at Once and choose a different template. If a selected Registration already has an active certificate with that template, Cademy includes the existing one in the ZIP and email delivery instead of creating a duplicate. If Template is not shown, Custom Certificates are not available and no second certificate is created.
Issue Certificates to Everyone on a Course at Once (Bulk Issue)
Bulk issuing is on each course’s Registrants tab, for up to 500 Registrations at a time. The main Registrations page does not offer it. It works for Order, manually added and imported Registrations; older booking records are not supported.
Open the course and select Registrants. Check the course date, search and filters.
Select the Registrations. Check whether you selected the visible rows or all matching results.
Select Issue Certificates. Check the selected count, the template and the delivery option. One template is used for the whole job, and Issue only (no email) is the default.
For Issue & email a manual address, enter the recipient’s email address.
Select the final Issue Certificates. This starts a background job; closing the window or selecting Cancel afterwards does not stop it.
When it finishes, review the issued, already issued and failed counts. Select Download ZIP for the certificates and check them.
Example of selecting Registrations in a course’s Registrants tab before choosing Issue Certificates.
Example of the Issue Certificates window for three selected Registrations, with Issue only (no email) selected.
With Custom Certificates, Template lists Cademy Default and your active custom templates, with the course’s template selected. The delivery options are:
Issue only (no email): issues missing certificates and gives you one ZIP of all of them.
Issue & email registrants: emails each learner their own certificate.
Issue & email registrants and primary contacts: emails each learner, and sends each Order Contact a ZIP link for their Order.
Issue & email primary contacts only: sends each Order Contact a ZIP link. Order Contacts can be different people from the learners.
Issue & email a manual address: sends one ZIP link to the address you enter.
Certificates already issued with the selected template are counted as already issued, keep their original details and are included in the ZIP and emails. If the selected template’s certificate was revoked, bulk issuing restores it with a new issue date and recalculates its expiry using the course’s current settings. So you can download or send a full set even if everyone already has the certificate. If any failed, open those Registrations before running the job again, as a rerun can send emails again. For selecting Registrations, see Find Who Is Booked on a Course (Registrations).
Check Whether a Certificate Was Issued or Emailed
Open the learner’s Registration and expand Certificate or Certificate & CPD to see each certificate, its expiry date and status. Their Contact’s Activity shows when a certificate was issued, whether it is valid, expired or revoked, and the certificate email with its delivery status. For more on email delivery, see Find Sent Emails and Check Delivery Status.
Example of certificate activity. The certificate’s VALID, EXPIRED or REVOKED status is separate from an email’s delivery status; one does not prove the other.
Email or Share a Certificate Link
Add the Certificate Link to an Email (Mail Merge)
The Certificate Link Mail Merge value opens the learner’s latest active certificate for the course. Adding it does not issue a certificate, so check that certificates exist first.
Open the course and select Registrants. Tick only the intended learners, then choose Email or Send Email. Check the selected count; all matching results can include more people than the visible page.
Enter the Subject and Email body. Place the cursor where the link should go, open the toolbar’s Mail Merge menu and choose Certificate Link.
Select Preview and check the learner named in Preview for, the subject and the message.
Select Send when ready, then check the email activity.
Copy a Link to One Specific Certificate
Open the Registration, find the certificate, open its Issued menu and select Copy. This link opens that specific certificate and does not depend on the learner’s course access or the Order’s payment status. A revoked certificate’s link stops working; an expired certificate stays viewable and downloadable.
Frequently Asked Questions
Issuing and Emailing
Can I choose a different template when issuing one certificate?
Yes, when Custom Certificates are available: use Template in the Issue Certificate window. To design one, see Design a Custom Certificate Template.
What does “already issued” mean in the bulk results?
The Registration already has an active certificate with the selected template. Cademy includes it in the ZIP and chosen email delivery, keeps its original issue details and does not create a duplicate.
Who receives automatic certificate emails?
The learner, when Email student when certificate is issued is on, and the Order Contact. See Set Up Automatic Certificates for a Course.
Viewing and Expiry
Which certificate appears on the learner’s course page?
Get Certificate on the course page’s Overview tab opens the learner’s most recently issued certificate that is not revoked. To share a particular certificate, use its Issued > Copy link.
Can learners still open an expired certificate?
Yes. An expired certificate stays viewable and downloadable. The Registration shows its expiry date, and Contact Activity shows it as expired.