An export to Excel that opens fine, but whose dates are plain text, whose amounts are numbers with no currency, and whose list total has simply vanished: the formatting gets redone by hand, every week, and nobody counts the time it takes. This application exports a list to a real, formatted workbook, whose totals row keeps working when you filter.
Who the application is for
To anyone who regularly extracts a list — contacts, orders, invoices, items — to read it or pass it on in a spreadsheet. It especially suits anyone who then sends that file to an accountant, a partner or a customer, and wants the formatting to hold up without rework.
What the application does
- Writes each column with the type it should have: a real, sortable date, an amount with its currency, a 'Yes' or 'No' box rather than a technical piece of text.
- Adds a totals row written as a formula, which recalculates automatically when you filter the visible rows in the workbook.
- Freezes the header row and sets the filter menus, so the workbook can be read and sorted without any manual setup.
- Remembers an export template per type of list — chosen columns, order, titles and totals — and places that template directly in the action menu of the relevant list.
- Warns on screen, before the download, when a monetary column mixes several currencies, instead of showing a format that only applies to part of it.
- Falls back to a plain file, with a banner that clearly says so, if the library needed for the formatted workbook is missing on the server.
Day to day
- Create an export template for the relevant type of list: name, chosen columns in the order you want, titles and totals.
- Place that template in the list's action menu: it now appears there for everyone.
- From the list, tick the rows you want, open the action menu and choose the export entry that matches your template.
- Produce the workbook and download it: the window reminds you of the chosen template and the number of rows before producing it.
- In Excel, filter a column and watch the totals row: it recalculates on only the rows still visible.
What the application does not do
- It does not add a spreadsheet editor to your screens: it exports to Excel, it does not reproduce a spreadsheet inside the browser.
- It does not build any pivot table: the workbook reproduces your list, column by column.
- It does not re-import a workbook once it has been edited in Excel: changes made to the downloaded file never flow back into your data.
- It does not touch any existing printed report: it exports a list, nothing more.
Getting started
Identify the lists you already export every month and decide, for each one, which columns to keep, their order and which totals make sense. Create one template per type of list rather than a single template for everything: that choice is what makes the export entry appear in the right place, in the action menu you already use.
Going further
To find out whether this application suits your business and how to activate it, compare the plans or write to us.