Excel Spreadsheets need of change

[eagle4life69]

OK so this is what I do right now.... I create packing slips for my job, All the information is passed to Excel using the Excel commands and it works great, but I have Idiots for coworkers and they seem to break it every time.

So what I would like is to maybe move the packing slip excel file to a crystal report (or anything I can just file print). What is the best way? My goal is just to have the report print and not have them worry about it, sounds simple but I have no bases on how to start.

I have all the variables like Address and Name and so on, but how do I make it easier/faster?

Thanks for your help on this.

[PsaltyDS]

Why not just print it from Excel, since you are already there?

$oExcel.Activesheet.printout

Edited May 4, 2011 by PsaltyDS

[eagle4life69]

I do thats the easy part. What I want is to get away from excel if I had a way to just print out a report without needing to open excel then fill out the packing slip then print just takes time I want to get rid of

[MrMitchell]

Where's the data coming from?

Try hiding the Excel window so the idiots can't find it while Excel does its thing in the background?

[eagle4life69]

I'm holding the data online I receive everything via a ssl webpage. I could hide the excel page but I know with crystal reports it can be almost instant on the print part, when I load the excel page it can take a min to fill out. My goal would be to have it print the labels and packing slip at the same time, right now I print the labels and then print the packing slip. The quicker I can do this the more production can get done

[PsaltyDS]

Some apps do things very quickly only because they are already running in the background. If your hidden Excel instance is already up, then changing a few cells and printing will happen nearly "instantly". The only delay would be if you Open/Print/Close on Excel for every ticket/slip.

[eagle4life69]

Some apps do things very quickly only because they are already running in the background. If your hidden Excel instance is already up, then changing a few cells and printing will happen nearly "instantly". The only delay would be if you Open/Print/Close on Excel for every ticket/slip.

oooooohhhhhhh now that is an Idea leave it open

[eagle4life69]

ok so I notice there is no documentation on using $oExcel.Activesheet.printout I have tried it and it prints it out like a charm. Now how do I set my options, if I need 3 labels I print pages 1-3 how can I tell it which pages to print?

Thanks for your help

[MrMitchell]

You need to look in the MSDN reference for the .printout method. It might also be in the Excel VBA help. For me, it's open Excel, press ALT+F11, then press F2, type "printout", press Enter.

Edit, add MSDN link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb179158%28v=office.12%29.aspx

Here's the syntax: expression.PrintOut(From, To, Copies, Preview, ActivePrinter, PrintToFile, Collate, PrToFileName, IgnorePrintAreas)

All are optional, so just try $oExcel.Activesheet.printout(1,3)

Edited May 9, 2011 by MrMitchell