Preparing The Master Grid

This will probably be the hardest part as margins have to be set to accommodate the size of the album sheet you are using. BUT YOU ONLY HAVE TO DO THIS ONCE.

  These notes, although they give a step by step instruction, do not include all the ‘OK's’ needed to carry out an action.

Double click on the spreadsheet programme. In Excel this appears as BOOK 1. We now have to set up the specifications for the grid. Change the FONT (the printing character) and the size of the font. (On the formatting toolbar) It is advisable to do this first as the font size affects the grid and page breaks. Click on TOOLS - OPTIONS - GENERAL and select the font you like best by clicking on the little up and down arrow. The font I have selected for this grid is Times New Roman 10 (OK) (A message will appear ‘You must close Excel & re-start for the font to take effect’). Close Excel, start Excel again, and the first screen should show your chosen font.

Adjust the column width by clicking on FORMAT - COLUMN - STANDARD WIDTH change this to 7.0 (OK).

We now have to set up the page, FILE - PAGE SETUP Here you have a number of choices.

PAGE PAPER SIZE choose 8½; x 11 or letter.

ORIENTATION. (Whether you want to print on Portrait (Upright) or Landscape paper). Make sure the little dot is on portrait.

MARGINS. For this exercise using a Senator Standard sheet cut to 8½ inches wide. TOP 1.0, BOTTOM 1.0, LEFT 1.5, RIGHT 1.5. CENTRE ON PAGE click on horizontal only. (A little cross should appear in the horizontal box.)

HEADERS. = (Show sheet 1) Footers = (Page 1). As we do not want these to appear on our album page I delete these. Click on CUSTOM HEADER - TAB (the left hand key with two arrows on) - DELETE - OK. Click on CUSTOM FOOTER - TAB – DELETE – OK. (Note on newer versions of Excel if no headers or footers ignore this).

SHEET. Has various options, all we are interested in is the checkbox which enables you to print, or not print the gridlines. Because we want to print our master grid we will leave this on for the moment, (i.e. a little cross in the gridline box) (OK). We are now ready to save our efforts on to the hard disk; go to FILE -SAVE AS. We use Save as, as we want the opportunity to name this file. Type in a name which conveys the meaning of the work you have just done. That is, we will (SAVE AS) 1grid, (OK). It is advisable to save your work frequently, just in case anything goes wrong. If using older versions of EXCEL you can use up to 8 letters or numbers to name the file, but cannot use spaces. EXCEL automatically inserts .xls after the file name.

Back to our saved grid. I use the first line for the heading of the page. As headings are usually of a much larger font select the whole of the first row (by pointing the mouse on 1A and keeping the mouse clicked on). Drag over the cells from IA to 1M (a black line appears) and change the size (on the formatting toolbar) to 16. (Click on the little arrow to the right of the font size). Select row 2A to 2M (by clicking and dragging) for a slightly smaller sub-heading to font size 12. The rest of the grid will be size 10.

Set the print area (page break) by previewing the spreadsheet. FILE - PRINT PREVIEW (or use the Print Preview button on the standard toolbar). Although there is nothing to print Excel will set the printing area of the page when you return to it by inserting page breaks; these appear as dotted lines on the edge of the page and at the bottom. Again save this file, because we have already saved the file as Igrid, we do not have to use SAVE AS, just SAVE (OK).

If you would like a border around the grid: select all the cells on the left side of the grid 2A-56A by dragging the cursor from 2A to 56A. Right click on the mouse; a box appears, select FORMAT – CELLS – BORDER. There are thick and thin borders to choose from. Choose which style you like (I have chosen the second one down), click on it, then click on the box Border Left, click on OK. Select cells 56A-56M for the bottom of the grid, right click mouse, box appears FORMAT CELLS, click on second border style then click on border bottom. (OK). Select cells right side 2M to 56M, right click, (format cells) select second style border, click on border right (OK). Select the top cells 1A-1D right click FORMAT CELLS, select second style border and click on border bottom. Select cells 1J to 1M right click, select second border style then bottom border. (OK). Our grid should now be complete. PRINT PREVIEW (on the standard toolbar). Close print preview, we will again SAVE this file (FILE - SAVE) We will now print our grid. FILE - PRINT, (or use the PRINT button on the standard toolbar) and print. I find it useful to number the top of the printed grid A -M as it appears on the screen and 1 - 56 down both sides of the grid, I also number down G 1 - 56 as this shows the centre of the sheet.

  Now that we have our printed grid we can turn off the Print grid in the FILE-PAGE SETUP- SHEET- GRIDLINES Click on the little box with an x in and it disappears. We turn off the print grid to ensure that the gridlines are not printed on to our album pages, and again SAVE the file.

  With our grid enclosed in a clear protector we are now ready to arrange our stamps etc. onto the grid and type in the information. Reading the horizontal and vertical grid references type the information in the relevant cells underneath the placed stamps, i.e. if the bottom of the stamp is placed on row 12 in cells BCDE the information will be typed on row 13 BCDE. We can centre this text exactly under the stamp by dragging the cursor through cells BCDE even if some of the cells i.e. DE are empty. Point the mouse arrow to the button on the toolbar Center across Columns (not the center button) and we have our text centred underneath the stamp. If the text is longer than the stamp on 13 BCDE, type the text in cells ABCDEF and centre them. To type a large block of text, select the text box button (on the standard toolbar) (or in newer Excel the text box should be dragged from the drawing toolbar onto Excel.). The cursor changes to a cross, place the cross where you want the text box to start, draw a box which you think will accommodate the amount of text you need. This is not crucial as you can move, stretch or decrease the size of the box by clicking on any comer or line of the box. Once you have finished inserting all text, we now have to remove the text box lines and justify the text. Double click on the text box line, a FORMAT OBJECT window appears; in PATTERNS click on BORDER NONE, (removes the text box line) click on ALIGNMENT and click on JUSTIFY (Justifies text) Once all the information has been inserted on to the sheet FILE - SAVE AS, insert a name which covers the page you are doing, e.g. MODROSEl in my instance this shows me it is modem roses page 1. We always use SAVE AS, as we want to retain our 1GRID for the next page of our collection. Have a look at the completed page before you print it, FILE - PRINT PREVIEW; if everything looks to be in order, spell check the sheet by clicking on the ABC button, then print it. You can either use the Print button on the Standard toolbar, or FILE - PRINT -OK. Files can be saved to your choice of drives: hard disk C, floppy disk A, zip disc, CD or memory key, depending on your PC. The choice can be made under the drives box in the save as window.

For drawing a series of small boxes to accommodate a set of uniform stamps: using the text box button on the format toolbar form ONE box, judging the size by the grid. Do a test PRINT of the box, then adjust the box until it is exactly the size you want. Now copy the box by holding down control (Ctrl) on the keyboard, place the cursor arrow on a line of the box, a small cross appears, still holding down control, keep the left mouse button depressed and move the mouse, a copy of the box appears as dotted lines, move the copy into any available space, Still keeping Ctrl pressed down copy as many boxes as you will need in any available space. Once you have the number of boxes that are required, then, by positioning the cursor on a solid line of the box, drag them into the required positions of the stamps on the paper grid. (Drag by holding down the left mouse button.) When everything looks to be correct FILE - SAVE, or SAVE AS (depending upon whether you will need another exact copy of this page or not).

EXCEL has some little anomalies. If you drag a cell from any border edge to another cell, the border goes with it! Select the relevant cell, right click, (format cells) and reverse previous instructions i.e. only click on the border you do not want i.e. the border box is blank (OK) then insert a new border in the one cell from which you dragged previously.

When inserting for instance a name e.g. ‘Peace’ as the first name in a cell, when you come out of the cell the ‘ disappears! To overcome this insert two ‘’ (not the inverted comma under the 2, the one under the @ sign) and only one disappears, leaving the name as you want it. Numbers are another problem, if you want for instance 10. on its own, the full stop disappears; to overcome this type in ‘10. the ‘ disappears and you are left with 10. This applies to any numbers on their own, if numbers are in the middle of a sentence they are OK.