ReflowPDFCommunity

Rebuilt our quarterly field report, no more fighting Word page breaks

3 replies · 590 views

8 rep

Every quarter I assemble a field report for ops: a few summary KPIs up top in a grid, then a long table of site visits that never fits cleanly on a page. In Word the table would split a row across the page boundary, or a heading would orphan itself at the bottom, and I'd lose an hour nudging things back.

This quarter I built it as one continuous document instead. The KPI block is a grid, the visit log is a real table, and when it ran past the first page the table just carried over, header repeating, nothing chopped mid-row. The summary grid reflowed too when I widened a column. Felt like editing a webpage that happens to paginate correctly.

Exported to PDF and it matched what I had on screen page-for-page, which after years of Word is really the part I keep telling people about.

3 Replies

A table carrying over with a repeating header and no row chopped in half is the thing I judge every tool on, and most of them quietly fail it. Nice work. One habit with long logs like that, a touch more row padding than feels necessary makes the page breaks land in nicer spots.

9 rep

One master. I duplicate last quarter's, wipe the table rows, paste the new visit data in, and the layout just absorbs it. The KPI grid up top is the only thing I touch by hand. Beats the Word ritual of re-fixing every page break from scratch.

8 rep
OP

this is helpful, appreciate everyone chiming in