7.

Creating data entry forms

Creating Easy Data Entry Forms in Excel

In this tutorial, I will show you an easy way to create data, entry forms in Excel and these forms.
Make it so much easier to enter records or data into Excel.

You can see here on the screen. I have a pretty simple spreadsheet. This is an employee list with
names, hire dates, employee numbers, and departments.

Let's say that a business has decided that they want to have an employee sheet and this Just the
beginning of setting up that employee list. Now. Imagine how time consuming and painful, it would
be to enter all of this data. For let's say, 200 employees. Yes, you can do it.

You can just click on the appropriate cell. You can type tab over type but doing it this way can lead
to more mistakes. And so, let's look at how to set up and easy data entry form in Excel.

The first step that I'm going to have to take, is to go up here to the quick access bar - this is a handy
bar where you can add additional tools and features that you want to be able to access easily and
quickly. That's why it's called the quick access toolbar.

And if you haven't already watched my previous tutorial on how to customize the quick access
toolbar. Please do so, but for the purposes of this video, I'm just going to click here on this button -
this is the customize quick access toolbar button. When you click that, it gives you a list of some of
the items that you can add to the quick access toolbar or take off the quick access toolbar.

But if Look toward the bottom of this pop-up menu. There's an option for more commands and I'm
going to click that. It takes me to a list of popular Excel commands.

But in this case, what we're looking for is not necessarily popular. So, I'm going to go down to either
all commands or commands not in the ribbon.

I'll just pick commands not in the ribbon. And what I'm looking for is form. That's what I'm trying to
create a quick, easy data, entry form. So I'm going to browse down. Look for form. There it is.

As I click on it and if you'll notice here on the right side, there are some items already in this list.
Compare those two. What's up above here on my quick access? Toolbar. It's the same things, the
same features are listed here, as are here in the upper left.

So, I want to add form to that list having selected form just click add. It's now added to this list.
And when I click on OK, it will now be added to my quick access toolbar. So, there it is. Now that I
have that button readily accessible to me. I will be able to easily create a data entry form for my
Excel spreadsheet.

Alright, the next thing we need to do is take this data that I have here in my spreadsheet and turn it
into a table. For some reason, that's a prerequisite of using these quick forms.

So how to turn this into a table. All I have to do is Click somewhere inside the data about here .
And then here on the Home tab, home ribbon in the Styles group. There's a button that says format
as table.
No, there is a faster way to do it. Once you've clicked anywhere in the data. You can just hold the
Ctrl key and tap T for table (CTRL + T) and that will bring up this pop-up.

And here Excel has tried to guess what? My data consists of and in 99% of the cases. It, does it
correctly. You'll notice that there's a dashed line, that's kind of moving across the top here and on
the left and on the right, that is outlining the shape of the table, and in most cases, it gets it
perfectly, correct.

If not, you may need to change some of the numbers here. You may need to click this and then
outline what you want to be included, or you might need to check or uncheck my table has headers.
I'm just going to click, OK, let's see if it works. It looks like it did. I can tell that Excel has identified
these items here as headers. So, I think that worked just fine.

And now, let's move on to the next step at this point. I just want to have clicked somewhere in the
table. So, I'll just make sure that I've done that. Click. And now I go up here to the quick access
toolbar and click the form button. Now notice what it did. It has identified 22, records or rows in this
table. It doesn't count the header row. It just skips it. But you'll notice that record. Number one is
Jina Pullin here at the left, but all of the data and information related to Jina and Pullin is listed
vertically. In this case, instead of horizontally.

Now, there are a couple of reasons why this is helpful.

One of them is, let's say you have a spreadsheet with like 14 columns or 15 columns. You wouldn't
want to have to click this bar, and drag to the right and type in the data or to tab over up to 14 times.
In order to enter in your data. It's kind of cumbersome to do it that way. And so, that's why you
might want to do what I'm showing here by creating an easy data entry form.

Now, if I click find next, look what it does. It goes to the next record. Marcelina Restrepo click.
Next again, Virginia Loftus and so forth and it's numbering those records here at the top, right? So I
can click through those.

Now. Let's say it's time to resume entering data for the employees of this company. I can click new
notice. It says, new record. I just click and next name. I'll type the next employees name. If I tap
tab, it does move to the next data entry cell hire date.

Now, you can just type that in the way you typically would maybe with the day, then the month and
the year. Or you can hold the control key and tap semicolon (CTRL + ;) and that puts today's date
into the form.

In this case. Gary Larson was not hired today. So, I will go ahead and change that to a different date,
put in the employee number and I can either click to the next cell in this entry form, or I can tab just
like I did before but in the department. And at this point, I can tap ENTER on the keyboard. It
inserts the record into my spreadsheet and gives me a new blank form.

If I close and Down the page, you can see there's Gary Larson, hire date, employee number, and
Department jumping back into the form is super easy. I just go up here on the quick access toolbar.
Click form. I'm right back in there. I want to enter a new employee and I simply resume.

So, if you do a lot of data entry, you're going to find yourself really prefering. These easy data entry
forms that you can create and use an Excel and it's really easy to do while we're here in this form
tool.
I want the Point out some of the other features and buttons that we have.

So, we've looked already at new notice that there's also Delete. So, this is a mistake. Obviously. I
don't know how I made that one but I can just click delete. Displayed record will be permanently
deleted. That's exactly what I want. So, I click OK and it's gone.

We also have a Find Previous button. So that goes from number 25 to number 24 to record number
23, Etc.

You can also Find Next that advances, the higher numbers.

Then we have a Criteria button and a Restore button.

Let's look at the restore button. So I'm going to click find previous a few times here. We have a
person named Eileen Osterberg and let's say that the company is considering changing her
Department from sales to customer service so I can just type that in.

But what if I realize that that was a mistake? I can just click restore and it goes right back to the way
it was before I started changing the data in this form.

So as long as you don't click close or tap enter on the keyboard, everything that you type here is easy
to undo just by clicking the restore button.

Okay, one button left to look at besides Close and that is Criteria.

The way Criteria works, is you click it and then you enter Criteria into this form and then Excel will
see if it can find one or more of the records here in the spreadsheet that match the criteria.

So for example, I would really like to find someone who has a name that includes the word Bob.
And the hire date doesn't really matter the employee number doesn't really matter, but the
department should be Communications. All right, so I have Bob and Communications at this point.
All I have to do is tap enter on the keyboard and look, it found Bob in Communications, there is.

Now, you may at first think that this number here in the upper right? Indicates that there are 25 or
18 Bob's in communication. But if you click next, you'll notice that's really all. There is just One
Bob in Communications.

So, what if I want to see everyone in Communications, not just Bob to do that.

I'm going to close the form, open it back up, and go to Criteria, put in Communications tap ENTER
on the keyboard.

And now look, it found Regina Loftus if I click next Palma Neumeister and there is good old Bob
Bowe again.
So, I hope that you see how useful and Excel data entry form can be, you can take your data entry
tasks. That might be Horizontal. And it can make it vertical and notice that you can scroll. So, it
could be 10 15, 20 different bits of data that you're entering in and it makes them vertical not
horizontal.

And it gives you these tools at the right to also help you to search within the table that you've
created.