How to Make an Electronic Form

How to Make an Electronic Form with Excel

Over several years I have tried to scan forms into my computer with the program touted as the best OCR program. Such a program hopefully would take the scanned page and turn it into an electronic form that can be edited with the computer. I have had very poor resutls. I understand Microsoft Office InfoPath is a program that comes with Microsoft Office 2007. However, I have Microsoft Office 2000 and have no such program available. I found little help googling for advice.

Following is what works using Excel to make an electronic form--a form which one can fill in blanks with the computer, and a form that can be edited with the computer.

To begin, plan the layout. Since any typing insertion in a cell moves the rest of the typing over, one must have a separate column for each place an entry will be made when entering data later. However, one can type across the two columns on a different row by merging cells.


That is, suppose you have two columns for separate entries, A and B. But for the next row, you want to use Column A and column B without a divide. You can do this by selecting the next row and moving your mouse across both columns. Then click on format – cells – alignment – merge.

Following are some tips that hopefully will help:


You may want to lock your form so that it cannot be changed, but leave a place for data entry. In this case you can choose the text box from the drawing toolbar to insert a box to fill in.
To lock the form, Click tools – protection – protect sheet, and uncheck objects. Text boxes are objects. If you prefer not to have the rectangle around the text box, on the drawing toolbar choose color fill and choose “no fill.”

If you want your textbox to go across columns, hold down the alt key as you move the textbox across. The textbox will conform to the cell borders.

If you make a textbox in error and want to delete it, move your mouse arrow around the box to find the crossbar. Click and then click delete.

After entering information in the textbox, one must click on another location or press the tab key to enter the information rather than clicking the return key on the computer.

Sometimes, all of a sudden (What did I do?) you will find a formula being entered into your spreadsheet. Look just under the menu bar and you will see the formula entry dialog box. You can turn this off.

Know the difference between gridlines and borders. Often you don’t want the gridlines printed. For example, if you print gridlines you get a border around the whole form. But maybe you want some borders printed: For example you may want a border on the bottom of a cell, or the sides or around several cells. You can make gridlines with the border feature just where you want them, cell by cell. Select the cell or cells you want a border on, click on format – cells – borders, select the line style and place them where you want them in the text box in the middle of the dialogue box.

To view the gridlines as you work, click on tools – options – view – window options and check the gridlines box.

To print gridlines, click on File – page setup – sheet tab – and check gridlines.

I hope this has been helpful. I look forward to any further suggestions or thoughts you might have.