DH Templates

MS Excel: How do I....?

I want to use excel to complete an invoice, but print only the data. I already have a NCR invoice set printed up, and I need to set up an excel template so that the columns and address fields etc will line up... can't find anything in MS Office's range of templates... where do I start!?

Public Comments

1. I think that you are going to have to experiment to get things to line up correctly. You will probably want to print to plain paper and then hold it over one of those invoice forms and up to a light to see if it lines up. The "solution" below assumes that you must print to one of those NCR forms, and cannot create your own invoice template. Once you get it all aligned properly, I would make a new copy of the worksheet in the same workbook. Go through this new sheet and delete everything that you don't want to print. Then, replace the numbers with formulas that reference the original numbers on the original sheet. Finally, print the copy. If you get that working, then I suggest saving the file as a template. Next time you need one, you can just do a File --> New and create a file from the template. You might find it easier to use Word tables to do this. In Word, you can format text to be hidden. So, you would format all of the non-printing text as hidden, and then make sure that your print setup specifies that hidden text should not be printed. Tim http://feeds.feedburner.com/ExcelBlog
2. What I usually do is create lots of columns, and make them very skinny. This way you have more options as to where to start your text blocks. Then merge cells together to create larger fields. If you have access to a scanner, you can scan in your invoice and have that in the background (set that up under >Format >Sheet >Background) of your sheet. I don't think it will print the background image. Or you can set it up so that you have a nicely formatted page where you key in the invoice info, and have all this data link to sheet2, which is used only for printing. On sheet 2, link to sheet1 like so: ='Sheet1'!A1