Link text fields in Designer 10 with cells in Excel or Word (table)?

[Mark56]

Egg,

I was kind of intrigued when the boss approached me with this as well. He has been trying to do something in Excel but has not been able to get anything he likes.
Yes the spots are all consistent for now and do not see any changes in the actual number of spaces for the foreseeable future.

Mike,

I think you did an excellent job with the video example. I think I can try and see where this might work. I have the spaces all put in the base layers of the current drawing example. Will make a copy and try putting the Excel file together to see what I can come up with.

When you say 'getting the cells the right size' are you referring to the Excel cells or the ones drawn in Xara? The point values on the hard coded Xara file is about a Arial 5 pt.

Thank you all for trying to help me in this new endeavor. Not sure if I'll get a chance to work on this over the weekend but will try and get something done. Will report back when I get some progress.


Mark

[Egg Bramhill]

Yes the spots are all consistent for now and do not see any changes in the actual number of spaces for the foreseeable future.

Hi Mark, I asked as some bays appear larger & smaller on your supplied images.

[pauland]

some bays appear larger & smaller

It made me wonder if some bays are for disabled people and some for motorbikes.

[Egg Bramhill]

Could be Paul, but I'm not even sure it's a parking lot, I think this was an example. However if Mark is going to link up a map to a spreadsheet obviously he'll need to bend the map to suit. Rather like the London Underground map is a schematic of the truth not the actual geographical map.

[pauland]

Here's a radical solution.

Just use excel. Colour the cell backgrounds appropriately. You can arrange the cells to logically reflect the allocation, if not the precise layout.

You can either not use Xara at all, or just load the excel as has been discussed.

A car park allocation diagram doesn't have to precisely mimic the physical layout, as Egg has mentioned.

[Egg Bramhill]

That's exactly how I've been doing it Paul, but using a Google Drive spreadsheet which loads into a placeholder. You can then use the "re-generate bitmap image" to show how the table looks and draw your map above the placeholder. The great thing about Google Sheets is you can "publish to the web" then each and every amendment is updated within a few minutes and reflected in the .xar file or Xara created site without any need for changes in Xara whatsoever.

download & preview the xar file in post #13

[pauland]

That's clever Egg. Maybe the OP wants a print document though - the OP doesn't say. You can always print the web page!

[Egg Bramhill]

Here's one more in line with Marks requirements. Preview to see.

[mikeymopar]

Mike,

When you say 'getting the cells the right size' are you referring to the Excel cells or the ones drawn in Xara? The point values on the hard coded Xara file is about a Arial 5 pt.

Thank you all for trying to help me in this new endeavor...

yeah Mark, the actual cell sizes in excel. borrowing Egg's example the cells ended up being 20hx6w. something you just gotta paly with to get it aligned right. and like Paul stated if you only need the coloring straight-up excel is the way to go obviously but if you need the image then it's pretty simple and basic importing the fields into Xara

That's exactly how I've been doing it Paul, but using a Google Drive spreadsheet which loads into a placeholder. You can then use the "re-generate bitmap image" to show how the table looks and draw your map above the placeholder. The great thing about Google Sheets is you can "publish to the web" then each and every amendment is updated within a few minutes and reflected in the .xar file or Xara created site without any need for changes in Xara whatsoever.

download & preview the xar file in post #13

embarrassed to admit it Egg and Paul but i'm really slacking in this area. With no reliable internet until a year+ ago and now having fast but spotty internet, i try to avoid anything on-line completely
i'm gonna have to spend a little time in my office and try this way out Egg. I might have other applications where this is useful. If either you or Paul have any other pointers I'm sure Mark and I would appreciate it
thx guys