Ok, here we go again. Time for the mrexcel forum members to help me play the hero. Alot of time usually passes between each time I need to use excel, but I am fairly quick to catch on to most tough topics.
So, here we go. Let me start with a synopsis of what I am doing. I am ultimately going to be using a word merge document which will be cut and paste into a shiny InDesign layout. Getting it ready for the merge to word is proving to be the tough point. I have the following items to juggle:
Styles: Ordered by number, they have a list of 2-10 attributes. Any given style number is unique to a particular product, regardless of what material is is made of.
Materials: Also ordered by a unique number, they have a list of 1-3 attributes.
Collection: A collection is a pairing of a material(s) and a style.
I have created 2 different masters spreadsheets, one each for the attributes given to Styles and Materials. I also have a spreadsheet for each Collection.
What I am ultimately looking to do with each Collection spreadsheet is to look at 2 columns (style and material) and then populate a range of columns with the corresponding attributes pulled from the style and material spreadsheets. Now that I type this out, it seems like it should be fairly obvious, but it is giving me grief.
So, a collection spreadsheet (the centerpoint of all of this work) has columns which include:
Style
Material
Description
misc columns for internal use
and then,
[BLANK]
[BLANK]
...
[BLANK]
It is those [BLANK] columns that I want to see change to match the attributes of the chosen style and material.
I have gotten as far as making sure that the style and material columns are a validated list (drop down) based off of the appropriate spreadsheet. Right start?
It is this Collection spreadsheet that will be merged into Word, and then sent to InDesign. This means one more question: when merging to word, since each style and material has a different number of attributes, is there a way to get word to ignore blank fields? Or would it be easier to do a find and replace to quickly get rid of all the empty places once it is in Word?
Again, thanks for your kind help.
So, here we go. Let me start with a synopsis of what I am doing. I am ultimately going to be using a word merge document which will be cut and paste into a shiny InDesign layout. Getting it ready for the merge to word is proving to be the tough point. I have the following items to juggle:
Styles: Ordered by number, they have a list of 2-10 attributes. Any given style number is unique to a particular product, regardless of what material is is made of.
Materials: Also ordered by a unique number, they have a list of 1-3 attributes.
Collection: A collection is a pairing of a material(s) and a style.
I have created 2 different masters spreadsheets, one each for the attributes given to Styles and Materials. I also have a spreadsheet for each Collection.
What I am ultimately looking to do with each Collection spreadsheet is to look at 2 columns (style and material) and then populate a range of columns with the corresponding attributes pulled from the style and material spreadsheets. Now that I type this out, it seems like it should be fairly obvious, but it is giving me grief.
So, a collection spreadsheet (the centerpoint of all of this work) has columns which include:
Style
Material
Description
misc columns for internal use
and then,
[BLANK]
[BLANK]
...
[BLANK]
It is those [BLANK] columns that I want to see change to match the attributes of the chosen style and material.
I have gotten as far as making sure that the style and material columns are a validated list (drop down) based off of the appropriate spreadsheet. Right start?
It is this Collection spreadsheet that will be merged into Word, and then sent to InDesign. This means one more question: when merging to word, since each style and material has a different number of attributes, is there a way to get word to ignore blank fields? Or would it be easier to do a find and replace to quickly get rid of all the empty places once it is in Word?
Again, thanks for your kind help.
