Technical Frustration
To all you lovers of computers and processing applications, I implore your knowledge, wisdom and service.
I've created a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet survey and have emailed it to several people; however, not all have Excel available for opening the said application.
So, my question is this ----does anyone know how to convert an Excel file to a fillable PDF (for free---most sights require fee)? Or to save an Excel file so that anyone can open it as an attachment without actually having Excel as one of their program files, and still be able to fill out the form?
Someone suggested exporting it into a PDF, but when I opened Microsoft Excel I was unable to find anything that would allow me to export it.
I was able to "save as" a webpage, however, from what I can tell it's not a fillable form in this format.
I'm just trying to figure out a way to get this survey to a mass of people without inconvenience them in anyway to fill it out and return it.
Any assistance would be greatly appreciate.
4 comments:
Those who don't have Excel can download a free Microsoft tool for viewing Excel Sheets ( Excel Viewer ), from here :
http://www.microsoft.com/downloadS/details.aspx?familyid=1CD6ACF9-CE06-4E1C-8DCF-F33F669DBC3A&displaylang=en
Or if you want to make their lives really simple you can install this free tool ( Pdf995 ) on your computer :
http://www.pdf995.com/download.html
It will install a printer on your computer that allows you to print any document into a pdf one. It can convert html, excel, word, jpeg ( images) - anything you can print - into PDF.
The installation is a two step process so download both files ( Pdf995 Printer Driver,Free Converter ) and then install them in sequence.
Oops ! I totally missed the fillable part :P. I have adobe acrobat - which allows all pdf features; but even though it does make the pdf fillable I couldn't get it to save the filled fields; you could only print out the filled up form. So I don't think that's a viable solution .
Another solution would be to use google's online documents all you need is a gmail account and your set to go. Once you create the document online just invite the people by email and they should be able to access it and edit it securely. you just need to make an a seperate document for every single person and email them a separate invitation so everyone fills in his own form and that's it !
luckily for you while googling for a tutorial on its use - for you - I found this tutorial "on how to create an online survey using google docs" :P :
http://www.ehow.com/how_4615530_survey-using-google-documents-free.html
By the way you can copy the whole document into an excel sheet by simply selecting all the fields and pasting it into excel. or you can export it directly into an xls file ........enjoy !
wa salaam
Thank u PH , I think the google doc has worked well with me.
Ibee let me know if u got the filled document.
you're welcome :)
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