Excel as a products catalogue?

[Guest]

The continuing story of my products catalogue...
Having experienced trouble with Word in that matter that too many pages with
picture objects and textframes leads to a collapse, I eventually tried
Publisher and, of course that would work fine. However I find it easier
working with Excel and therefore my question is: Can Excel handle lots of
A4-sheets with up to 15-20 rows where also each row gets a jpg-picture in a
frame? Or would this Excel-file also break up and lock after page 20?

I have tried a couple of pages and so far it seems ok. The resulting
catalogue is then supposed to be saved as pdf and burned on cd. I really hope
this works in Excel. I would really appreciate opinions and experiences on
this matter.

Patric.

 

[Guest]

XL is best used when you want to add subtract multiply and divide (or
otherwise analyze data). When you ask it to do otherwise you run into
inherent limitations. If you have publisher then I would say now is the
perfect opportunity to learn how to use it. It is designed to publishing
things like cataloges.

That is my 2 cents (for what it is worth)...

 

[Guest]

"Will it work?" Probably will - 20 rows x 20 sheets = 400 .jpg files with
some desctiption text frams. It would be what I would call a 'load' on the
system, but I don't think you're going to suffer catastrophic application
failure with it.

"Should you..." probably not, for exactly the reasons that Jim Thomlinson
gave: that's not what Excel was really designed to do. MS Publisher or (even
though it failed?) Word would be the preferred tools in a document that is
strictly an instrument of information presentation, as opposed to information
management, analysis or manipulation.

 

[Guest]

Ok, thankyou for both your answers.

I do of course understand that Excel is for advanced calculating, however
with it's inviting input possibilities it feels so much easier using Excel as
supposed to pages with lots of free floating objects everywhere around.. I
might not have been clear enough as to what my pages are going to look like;
Imagine a landscape A4-page with maybe at most twenty rows and say five
columns, each first cell would contain a picture the remaining column/cells
are then used for input-data such as article-number, description, packaging
and prices. Just normal "data" so to speak.

Knowing this, my question is: Will Excel at some point fail because it
contains too much jpg-files, or can it handle the data?

Pat.

 

[Pete_UK]

I personally have used files up to about 50mB, and others here have
talked about files in excess of 100, but it will depend on how many
pictures you have and what size they are as to whether that will be
enough for your catalogue. Big files are certainly very slow and
cumbersome, but this might not be of much concern if you are not
planning to do many calculations. I would have thought that this is a
database application linked to publisher, so have you considered using
Access?

Incidentally, you might find this link to be of use if you are
thinking of making it an interactive catalogue:

http://www.mcgimpsey.com/excel/lookuppics.html

Hope this helps.

Pete

 

[Guest]

Pat,
It's difficult to make an absolute yes/no recommendation. Much depends on
variables such as the system it will be used on, the size of the pictures and
other things I haven't thought of. It becomes a 'try it and see' scenario
where you must expect failure along the way, all the while hoping it'll work.

You haven't mentioned how this is to be published, or where? That could
play into it also. One thing you might think about, if it is something other
than a purely printed document, is to include links to the pictures of the
products rather than inserting the graphics themselves. First cell could
have hyperlink that says something as simple as [Click to view Product]. See
the worksheet HYPERLINK function for an easy way to setup such a link
(without having to Insert each hyperlink). This would greatly reduce the
size of the workbook, and help guarantee that it works as you want it to.
[note - second try, not sure if system truly accepted it first time or not]

 

[Guest]

Thankyou! These have been very useful answers. Obviously This catalogue will
not contain very much data so I will have a try at it.

The resulting file (catalogue) will be saved as pdf-document, burned on cd,
and also published as pdf on my companys homepage.

As I see it it will be easier making alterations within the catalogue using
Excel as opposed to lots of layout work in Publisher... Well thats how I feel
rigth now at least.

 

[Guest]

Good luck with the project. I personally think that the chance of success is
very high. I know that given the conditions you've described, I wouldn't
hesitate to attempt to do it this way. Since you've mentioned publishing as
an A4 page size, that leads me to belive that the individual graphics will be
relatively small which reduces the risk and by publishing with Adobe Acrobat,
you'll have an opportunity to optimize the final product for publication on
the web which will help reduce its file and make loading it from the
company's home page a bit faster.