Word Add-in Tips and Tricks

Below we have outlined some helpful tips and tricks you may want to consider when creating the Template and Workbooks Report.

Word Template

When using tables, such as for the creation of Line Items use an unformatted table – this prevents any unwanted formatting being applied to values in the table when placeholders are filled.

When entering currency and numeric values into table cells set them to be right aligned so that tens, hundreds, thousands and so on align nicely.

When using a placeholder for a percentage value, manually add the % symbol after the placeholder as this will not pull through to the Word Document.

Consider using tables with hidden borders, this will help format and align text nicely and help space out information once the merge fields have been populated. 

Credit Note amounts are stored as negative numbers and therefore require calculated columns in the report to pull them through into the template as positive amounts.

When using the syntax for using multiple Reports or Summary Views, make sure there is no space between the quote mark and the Report Name. <repeat_table data_view=’ Word Add-in Test – Employees:details’ is incorrect and will not pull through any data from the report, whereas: <repeat_table data_view=’Word Add-in Test – Employees:details’ is correct and will generate the document correctly.

Report

When creating the Report you may want to prefix the Report with something such as  WORD in order to easily locate the reports associated to templates, alternatively you could apply a Template Category of “Word Add-in” as a means of locating them.

When building the Report, only apply criteria sparingly, try to create simple Reports so that they run quickly without criteria. More details on how to ensure reports run quickly can be found here.

If you want dates in your template,  they’ll automatically appear in the format “dd-mm-yyyy” for example “25-Dec-2020”.  If you want to change the output style of the date use the advanced tab in the Report column and change display as “default” to display as “date” and then select the format you want to see it in.