Need help with how-to: Excel to PDF to email

[install4you]

Greetings to all from a brand new member!

I just re-read what I wrote and decided it was too long! I'll get to the point immediately and then retain my full explanation for those who care to read it. ALL HELP (even attempts to help) is greatly appreciated!!!

My request to forum members is this--how can I best perform these steps on an android smart phone: create and use an Excel invoice template, capture the invoice as a PDF, and email the PDF to my clients from my phone from my company domain? Some steps are kinda no-brainers--others are somewhat mysterious.

I bought a Casio G'zOne Commando (after good experience with 2 different G'zOne regular phones) because I'm so rough on my phones. My work often puts me on top of a ladder when I receive calls and I'm subject to getting caught in the rain. Both of my regular G'zOne phones have rung under water.

I have a small (just me) service business assembling &/or installing almost any decorative products (drapery, blinds, framed mirrors, art, etc.). I work mostly on referral for individuals and ongoing trade clients. I normally collect for work performed at the time of service from individuals but most of my trade clients get billed via email. Using my PC I use an Excel template for invoicing, "print" the invoices to a PDF, and email the completed docs.

This is where I have a huge problem. My levels of busy-ness, record keeping, and personal organization are not compatible with preparing and sending out invoices. I'm losing money and customers because of long delays with my billing. That's why I bought a smart phone--to invoice on the spot. The folks at Verizon "assured" me I could do this.

I've looked at my invoice template with some Excel-clone apps and none of them seem to recognize all the formulas and macros. Some come close to matching the template's appearance--some don't. I have just about determined that the Adobe PDF creator app is the only one that will capture the invoice as a PDF.

I'm having trouble even knowing how to approach doing the thing I bought a smart phone to do. I welcome your comments, suggestions, total solutions, &/or custom created apps .

Thanks in advance!!
install4you

 

[Moscow Desire]

Greetings to all from a brand new member!

I just re-read what I wrote and decided it was too long! I'll get to the point immediately and then retain my full explanation for those who care to read it. ALL HELP (even attempts to help) is greatly appreciated!!!

My request to forum members is this--how can I best perform these steps on an android smart phone: create and use an Excel invoice template, capture the invoice as a PDF, and email the PDF to my clients from my phone from my company domain? Some steps are kinda no-brainers--others are somewhat mysterious.

I bought a Casio G'zOne Commando (after good experience with 2 different G'zOne regular phones) because I'm so rough on my phones. My work often puts me on top of a ladder when I receive calls and I'm subject to getting caught in the rain. Both of my regular G'zOne phones have rung under water.

I have a small (just me) service business assembling &/or installing almost any decorative products (drapery, blinds, framed mirrors, art, etc.). I work mostly on referral for individuals and ongoing trade clients. I normally collect for work performed at the time of service from individuals but most of my trade clients get billed via email. Using my PC I use an Excel template for invoicing, "print" the invoices to a PDF, and email the completed docs.

This is where I have a huge problem. My levels of busy-ness, record keeping, and personal organization are not compatible with preparing and sending out invoices. I'm losing money and customers because of long delays with my billing. That's why I bought a smart phone--to invoice on the spot. The folks at Verizon "assured" me I could do this.

I've looked at my invoice template with some Excel-clone apps and none of them seem to recognize all the formulas and macros. Some come close to matching the template's appearance--some don't. I have just about determined that the Adobe PDF creator app is the only one that will capture the invoice as a PDF.

I'm having trouble even knowing how to approach doing the thing I bought a smart phone to do. I welcome your comments, suggestions, total solutions, &/or custom created apps .

Thanks in advance!!
install4you

Verizon will say anything to get you to buy Then again, all the carriers would as well. They probably only understood less than half of what you asked

The good thing, as you may have already discovered, is Documents to Go (paid version), is probably the best you can get to read and edit Office documents. 2 other apps, Quick Office and Polaris Office (if you can still find them) are the other 2 most popular apps. I believe Polaris is no longer on the market, as they are now exclusive to Asus, but you can still rip them from customs roms, and the prior versions are considered a free app.

The problem, is that they are not MS Office, and as such, they won't read all the formatting and formulas that the full fledged Office product allow. I would suggest keeping it simple, and redesign your invoice template to suit the capabilities of Docs to Go, for example.

AdobeCreatePDF should be the other app you need.

Unfortunately, I don't thing there's a streamlined approach between the two, (ie; convert xls to pdf from within the office app).

Printing. Android is as yet to have any native printing functionality. There are a couple of apps that will print to a wireless printer behind a network router. Perhaps they have some newer versions.

There are some decent invoice apps from the market, that may be a little more what you need, Invoice2go, seems to also have a PC client app that should allow syncing between your device and the pc. Might want to take a look at it. Seems it was very popular on the iPhone platform, so they've released an android version.

The problem is, most of the good stuff are "paid" apps. So you may wind up tossing a couple of Mickey D's combo meals down the drain if they don't meet your needs due to the extremely short "refund" policy the market has.

Wish I could help more.

 

[install4you]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll keep plugging away.

BTW-I totally agree with you about reading instructions...in general; HOWEVER,... in the last few years, most instructions I read for anything electronic are USELESS. They usually say things like "This is the [whatever] button. Press it to make your [name of device] do [whatever]." This is particularly annoying when the [whatever] is an acronym for something very important that the writer assumes you know all about and there is no other mention of the [whatever] anywhere else in the manual. What happened to the people who know how to think and actually considered where a new user of the devise might have problems of questions?

Oops! Sorry to rant and vent.

The single most important teacher comment missing from the report card systems for most schools is "this student should NOT breed!"