MS Excel formatted stationery
Smile provides stationery output types postscript (PS or PDF) and MS Excel in a stationery documents Page setup. While format selection is as simple as selecting the appropriate options from the page setup drop-downs there are some fundamental differences to be aware of when designing stationery in the different formats.
In the previous stationery topics the Configuration Guide assumes that the majority of stationery will be configured in PDF format. This topic outlines the differences when designing MS Excel stationery.
What you cannot do in MS Excel stationery
The following design elements are not available or will be ignored in MS Excel formatted stationery:
- field width or height
- font styling such as font size or colour
- graphics, both background and in fields
Page setup
Page setup defines the basic size, layout, email template and file format of a stationery document. To define an Excel document select the following:
- Output type
- MS Excel
- Page group output format
- MS Excel (.xls)
Page group
A page group is presented as a worksheet in the resulting MS Excel workbook. If a stationery document contains multiple page groups each will be presented as a separate worksheet in the one workbook. Worksheets are labelled the name set for the page group in Smile.
Page layout
If a page group has multiple page layouts, they are all presented on the same worksheet. Additional care is necessary to ensure data and text fields do not overlap.
When configuring an MS Excel stationery document only the Fields tab is available in a page configuration. The Fields tab summarises the location of each text or data field using the Top and Left settings. These fields specify the cell number from the top or left of a spreadsheet, not a measurement.
The following example shows the field configuration in Smile and the resulting output in MS Excel format. The field TAX INVOICE has a Top setting of 1.0 and a Left setting of 10.0. In the Excel worksheet that means it is located in the 1st row from the top of the page and in the 10th cell from the left, J1.
Figure: Main stationery property page
Tables
Tables are placed under any fields that have been specified on a page layout. You cannot place a table in the middle of a page in the same way you can with postscript stationery. As you can not specify a length limit on an Excel table it is recommend that you place a table in a new page group.