Template

[Guest]

HI

we have a spreadsheet that is used as an incident report. However not everybody fills in the appropriate fields because the sheet is a bit hard to get around and people often miss fileds.

What I would like to do is; when a new form is obtained(File>New>Incident Report) a popup box appears and asks for data for that cell eg (F5) "please enter date of incident", then when the information is entered another box appears for cell G8 "please enter name of person" etc.

Much the same as one uses the "fillin" field in Word, then when a new document is obtained based on that template the pop up bxes appear.

Is this at all possible. Pleeeeeaaaasssse say it is!

Thanks very much for your time!

 

[papou]

Hi
There are several ways to achieve what you are asking including some
programming.
A first (and simple) approach could consist of protecting your worksheet
thus restricting input to the relevant cells and of using a combination of
Data Validation and custom error messages when entries are faulty or
missing.
A second (and yet simple) approach could consist of using Condtionnal
formatting to visually identify cells requiring input data, using "flashy"
colours for instance.
A more sophisticated method could consist of using a userform which would
load at workbook_open event and which could ,for instance, not be closed
until input is completed.
There are some other wide possibilities using VBA programming so if you
choose this option, I would suggest your posting to
public.excel.programming.

HTH
Cordially
Pascal

HI

we have a spreadsheet that is used as an incident report. However not

everybody fills in the appropriate fields because the sheet is a bit hard to
get around and people often miss fileds.

What I would like to do is; when a new form is obtained(File>New>Incident

Report) a popup box appears and asks for data for that cell eg (F5) "please
enter date of incident", then when the information is entered another box
appears for cell G8 "please enter name of person" etc.

Much the same as one uses the "fillin" field in Word, then when a new

document is obtained based on that template the pop up bxes appear.

 

[Dave Peterson]

You may want to make your data more tabular. Then you could use Data|Form
(builtin).

If you try this and find it less than optimal, you could use John Walkenbach's
enhanced data form:

http://j-walk.com/ss/dataform/index.htm