LabeLase Producer

Printing Tags from an Excel Spreadsheet

The XLTags form allows you to import lists of tag data from a Microsoft Excel or CSV (comma separated variable) file. The form then extracts the data from the various columns and associates it with fields in the tag layout. One or more tags are then printed for each row of data in the file.

Data Files

Before you can send Excel file information to the printer, you must create a file containing the data to be printed. XLTags extracts information from this file and prints it one record at a time.

XLTags can read files of two types: comma-delimited text files (preferred) and Microsoft Excel spreadsheet files.

Comma-Delimited Text Files

XLTags natively uses plain text files, where each line of text represents a tag to be printed. The fields on the tag are separated in the text file with a comma character. Every line of text in the file must contain the exact same number of fields. You may use any of several methods for creating this type of file including Notepad or another text editor (do not use Word or WordPad unless you save the file as plain text.) You can also create the file with Microsoft Excel and save it as comma-delimited CSV format as discussed below. The file extension for this type of file is .CSV or .TXT.

Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet Files

XLTags also has a limited ability to read Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.XLS) files. The spreadsheet must be designed to use only a single workbook and must not include formulas, functions or any other non-text data. Each column in the spreadsheet represents a field of data, and each row represents a record (one tag.)

If the spreadsheet contains special features, or is excessively large, XLTags may take a very long time to read it, or it may hang while trying. Because of this, we recommend that you save your spreadsheet as a CSV (comma-delimited) format.

File Format

Regardless of how you create the data file, its format is very important for XLTags to function properly. As previously stated, each line of text in the data file represents one tag and each field within that line represents a data to be printed. However, XLTags treats the first field within the record differently from the others.

The LabeLase® printer can print an unlimited number of fields of text on a tag. Each field, also, has no limit on the number of characters it may contain. However, the tag geometry itself may place restrictions on the maximum number of characters for any given field and/or layout. It would be nice if the tag printer had the capability to take a long text field and break it up over several lines, performing word wrap as required to ensure that words are not split between lines. The tag printer itself is not capable of this, but fortunately XLTags is.

The first field of a record can contain more characters than can fit on any one line of the tag layout. XLTags will automatically split the line into multiple lines, performing word wrap as needed, and print the tag. All fields after the first are sent as-is and must fit within the available real estate limitations.

When designing your tag layout, you must create operator-entered text fields as the first "X" fields in the layout. The number of fields to reserve depends upon the maximum number of characters in the longest first field of the file. For example, if the longest first field in the text file is 75 characters and the tag layout will only accommodate at most 25 characters per line, then you must reserve the first three operator entered fields of the layout to hold the data. Each additional field in the file will occupy fields 4, 5, 6 etc.

It may take some experimentation to determine the optimum tag layout for your data. Just be sure to use the longest first field in the data when determining the layout.

Operation

The top of the display is the program's main menu as well as a toolbar of most frequently used commands. Just below the toolbar is an area that shows the contents of the currently loaded file. Just below the file area is an indicator that shows the current record being processed. Note that the area showing the file information is editable so you can make changes to the data and then save these changes if desired. In fact, you could create the entire data file right in this editor and save it to disk.

Below the file information is an area that shows each item's data as it is being processed. To the right of this is a display of the status of the job.

Opening a Data File

When you select the File menu, you will be presented with a menu as described below:

New - Clear the currently loaded file from memory and prepare for a new file.
Open - Open a file from disk.
Save - Save the contents of the file, overwriting the original contents on disk.
Save As - Save the contents of the file to a new file.
Begin - Start printing the data file.
Cancel - Stop printing.
Exit - Close the XLTags window and return to the Operator window.

When you select the Open command, a dialog will appear that allows you to select the data file to open. This is a standard Windows Open dialog that allows you to select CSV, TXT and XLS files. Browse to the folder that contains your data file, select the proper file type, click the file name and then click Open.

If you select an XLS (Excel spreadsheet) file, you will be presented with the Import Excel File dialog, which allows you to specify how the data is to be extracted from the spreadsheet.

Excel File Import

Excel spreadsheet files cannot be used directly, so they must be imported into the program and converted to a comma separated file format. The Import Excel File dialog performs this operation.

XLTags has a limited ability to read Microsoft Excel spreadsheet (.XLS) files. The spreadsheet must be designed to use only a single workbook and must not include formulas, functions or any other non-text data. Each column in the spreadsheet represents a field of data, and each row represents a record (one tag.)

If the spreadsheet contains special features, or is excessively large, XLTags may take a very long time to read it, or it may hang while trying. Because of this, we recommend that you save your spreadsheet as a CSV (comma separated variable) format.

Specify the workbook number that contains the data you want to import. All of your data must be contained within a single workbook.

If your data contains comma characters, check the box “Replace embedded commas with spaces” to remove these commas. Since XLTags uses comma separated fields, the fields themselves must not contain comma characters.

Printing Tags from the Spreadsheet

When you select the Begin command (or click the Begin button on the toolbar) a dialog form will appear that allows you to configure and begin the download process.

Split
Specify how the first field in the data gets split among the fields of the tag layout. First, specify the number of fields of the tag layout that have been reserved for the split data. Second, set the limit on the number of characters that can fit into each of these split lines.

Records
Enter the starting and ending record numbers to be printed. If you wish to print only a subset of the available records, enter the appropriate starting and ending record numbers.

Quantity
Specify the quantity of tags to be printed. If you check the box next to "Obtain Quantity from Field #", you must enter a number that indicates which field from the data text file contains the number of tags to print. With this feature, you can print different amounts of tags for each record. The "Number of Copies of each tag" field allows you to create exact duplicates of each tag.

Combine Rows
If you want to combine more than one row of spreadsheet data into a single print cycle, check the box and enter the number of rows to combine. XLTags will combine the specified number of rows into a single block of data and send it to Producer to be printed as part of a single print cycle. Note that your layout must be designed to accept Operator Data Entry fields equal in number to the number of columns in the spreadsheet times the number of rows being combined.

When you have entered all of the required information, click the Ok button to begin the download process. The XLTags program will send each record of data from the file to the tag printer to be printed. As each record is printed, the Current Record indicator will increment and when it reaches the Ending Record Number, the process will complete.

LabeLase® Producer XLTags Batch Printing

Printing Tags from an Excel Spreadsheet

Excel File Import

Printing Tags from the Spreadsheet

LabeLase® Producer
XLTags Batch Printing