Printing with a dot matrix printer on pre-printed forms

[Ryanmlos]

Hi all

First post here, please bear with me!
My company started using preprinted forms to print out delivery receipts with a dot matrix printer. We only need to print 2 pieces of data on this form at specific places, then move onto a new form and print the next 2 pieces of info. Ive tried searching and haven't found anything remotely related to this situation.

Essentially, we will have a spreadsheet with 2 columns with cells containing stock codes eg:
StockA1 StockB1
StockA2 StockB2
etc

The number of rows will vary, one week may be 20 rows of info, the next may be 76 rows.

I need to be able to take the info in each row, and send it to the printer so that it prints in the right place of the form, and move onto the next row/page until all rows have been printed.
Currently, I have a spreadsheet with a bunch of empty rows, 2 rows where the info needs to be, then more empty rows followed by the next 2 items, empty rows etcetc...As you can imagine this could require some tedious reworking week after week as the number of forms to be printed changes each week.
There has to be a better way to do this!
I havent got the experience of working with excel (or dot matrix printers) in this way so any advice showing me where to start looking would be very much appreciated!!

Thanks!

 

[pjmorris]

Hi Ryan,

Firstly welcome to the forum.

I would investigate using mail merge in Word. You can then set for page out exactly as you require and use the Spreadsheet as your source data. When you come to print you can select which records (Excel rows) are used and hence can avoid the blanks, no matter how many of them there are.

Hope this helps - even though its not really an Excel solution.

Regards

 

[Ryanmlos]

Hi Peter

Thanks for the welcome and the advice, words mail merging is the way to go...
Much appreciated!
oh and thnx for reminding me how much i hate word now i need to find a word forum and have a good rant over table design...

 

[pjmorris]

Reply appreciated - Tables can be frustrating, but if you're only inserting 2 pieces of information on a pre-printed form why not just lay out the form using lines and tabs etc and don't bother with the table?

Just a thought.

 

[Ryanmlos]

Thats what i thought too...my test run with 4 pieces of info ran over into 7 forms. so this excel problem evolved into a word problem. thnx for the thought!

 

[pjmorris]

I dont think I said mail merge was easy! just easier than attempting the same thing with VBA!