A bit of a tricky one to explain, so here goes:

I work in a laboratory which has several incubators. Each of these is monitored daily for temperature by way of a thermometer within each incubator. To record the temperature we print out many copies of an excel worksheet at the start of each month where we manually fill in the details at the top of the form (ie. incubator ID, thermometer ID, required temperature, allowed deviation, correction) and below that is simply an empty table where we write in the temperature for that day. I have reproduced the form below (it seems to have lost the cells - but you get the general idea). At the end of each month we need to print out new forms. We have to handwrite the details in each time per incubator, and it takes time, increasing transcription error as well. Furthermore the "temperature correction" is likely to change when we calibrate our thermometers quarterly, so it is not static data. Also the month and year changes, but I reckon just manually changing that directly in the template would be easiest as that data is common to all incubators.

What I want to be able to do is use the template as a sort of "mail merge" whereby it collects data, populates fields and automatically prints out the unique templates. A data set would look like this....

FA01234, Therm2, 36.0, 1.0, -0.2
FA01111, Therm7, 22.0, 3.0, 0.5
FA03387, Therm23, 42, 0.5, 0.0

....and so on.

So, when I want to output the incubator specific templates all I need to do is check (and change, if necessary) the data set and allow excel to print out a template per incubator.

I know you can do this in WORD but the file is an excel one.

Any ideas appreciated,

Greg.

EXAMPLE BELOW:




ROUTINE TEMPERATURE MONITORING OF
INCUBATOR

Section/Department: Equipment Type:

Equipment Identification (FA no.): Thermometer No:

Required Temperature (incl. tolerance): Correction:

Corrected Thermometer Reading (with correction): Month:

DATE THERMOMETER COMMENTS ANALYST
READING (°C)
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