SpreadsheetConverter FAQs: Web design

I would like to add a SpreadsheetConverter web page to my web. I use FrontPage.

If you have navigational bars on top or to the left in your web site, you cannot use ‘Insert-file’ into an existing web page. If you do FrontPage will create a non-working web page!
Instead you must use the following method to add the page:

Select File-Import and press Add File. Select the file generated by SpreadsheetConverter.
Open the newly inserted page. Note that it contains no navigational bars.
Select Format-Theme and select the default theme.
Select Format-Shared Borders and apply to the selected page.
Select View-Navigation and using drag-and-drop move the inserted page to the location where you want it.
Right-click on the page that you just moved and make sure that ’Included in Navigation bar’ is selected.

Now, your page should appear like the other pages in your web site and the navigation structure should include the new page.

How do I change the look-and-feel of the page?

The look-and-feel of the web page generated by SpreadsheetConverter is defined by a number of style sheets in the header of the HTML-file. By changing the style sheet values the page layout will change.

You can also open up the page in FrontPage or Dreamweaver and change the layout and look-and-feel. All calculations will continue to work as normal.

I would like to be able to select values from a dropdown-list (select)

Lists created using Data-Validation-List in Excel will automatically be presented as dropdown-lists.

I would like to be able to have a checkbox

All input cells that contain TRUE/FALSE (or any localized version of it like WAHR in Germany), will automatically be presented as checkboxes.

I want to limit input to a range. Such as 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10

Either create a dropdown list in Excel using Data-Validation-List, or put a formula like =IF(AND(A1>0;A1<11;A1=INT(A1)),””,”Enter value between 1 and 10″) in the cell next to the input cell. Format the text red, so that it will stand out.

I would like to put all of the worksheets in a workbook onto tabs, just as it appears in Excel

You will get tabs if you choose to show more than one worksheet.

The web page is a little wider than the Excel page

The width of the tables created by SpreadsheetConverter are only approximate. Browsers will do some reformatting when it shows the page.

I want to make the calculator part of an existing web page?

If you ever need to insert a spreadsheet on an existing page in your web, just follow the steps below.

Create the spreadsheet in Excel.
Convert the spreadsheet to a web page using SpreadsheetConverter.
Open the resulting web page in your html editor.
Using your html editor, also open the existing page where the spreadsheet is to be inserted.
In the <head> … </head> section of the SpreadsheetConverter file, locate the section beginning with <!– Header start –> and ending with <!– Header end –> and copy it (including the leading and trailing comment) to the end of the <head> … </head> section of the existing page.
In the <body> … </body> section of the SpreadsheetConverter file, locate the section beginning with <!– Body start –> and ending with <!– Body end –> and copy it to where you want the spreadsheet to appear in the <body> … </body> section of the existing page.
(optional) Copy the onload-event from <body into your <body-tag. Typically the onload-event looks like this:
<body onload=”initial_update();document.formc.pA1A.focus();”>
It initializes the form and places the cursor at the first field.

Can we specify the output HTML page in terms of cell and text sizes and colors so it matches our website format? Or are we restricted to the formatting options that are available in Excel?

The generated web page will look like your Excel sheet with colors, borders, sizes etc. This is a standard web page, so you can open it and change the layout, color etc using a tool like Dreamweaver.

I noticed the one that calculates the distance between two cities. Yet, the database information was not shown on the resulting web page.

You can decide what to show to the user. The rest is hidden in JavaScript.

I am trying to convert a sheet which has a lookup table on it, but I do not wish the lookup table to appear in the final web page.

SpreadsheetConverter will automatically hide lookup tables, so you can place them on the same sheet.

Is there a trick to get a page to start in an empty/non-input field?

Set focus needs the name of field where focus should be changed. If you name the cell in excel to ‘mystart’, you can use that name there.

The <body part has a onload-attribute where setFocus is called. You can change that to another field.

So instead of

document.formc.pA1A.focus();

use

document.formc.mystart.focus();

I want to add a button to link the converted html file to home page in my web

Add the following code to your page

Just change out the “page.html” with the URL of the page you want to click and go to. This faq is only relevant for SpreadsheetConverter v4 or earlier. Version 5 lets you show Excel’s hyperlinks as buttons.

When printed, the web page is printed in half size.

The problem is that you have white invisible columns to the right, and this together with “shrink-to-fit” when printing, gives this result.

Solution:

Open the worksheet, press Ctrl-End and see in which column you end up.

Assuming you end up in column Z, but you only want the user to see column A to H, select column H to Z and hide these.

Web design