"Pretty" PDF export -- Google merge, something else?

amanda

Hi all,

We’re hoping to be able to export a fairly complicated styled PDF from Smartsheets. Imagine a sheet of movie reviews, where Column A is movie title, B is review, C is reviewer and D is date. Each movie can have multiple rows depending on how many reviews it’s received.

We’d like to get a PDF that would look a little like this:

Movie Title (column A:2)

“This movie was awesome!” (B:2)

- Siskel (C:2), May 18 2017 (D:2)

“This movie was the literal worst.” (B:3, where A:3==A:2) 

- Ebert (C:3), May 18 2017 (D:3)

 

In a dream world, we can use the PDF export on both Reports and Sheets.

I thought maybe Google merge would do it, but it sounds like Google merge only prints 1 row per page and can only work from Sheets.

Is there a different solution that I’m not seeing? Something close? If not, is it even within the realm of possibility? If it is, could one hire a developer to build an app to do this?

Thanks! 

Gwyneth C

Hi Amanda,

It sounds as if you've already explored the Google Docs Merge add-in and as you point out, it won't allow you to merge data from more than one row onto a single page.

Just in case you want more info and have not yet explored the Help Center... here's a bit more about the Smartsheet add-in. 

https://help.smartsheet.com/articles/1850128-smartsheet-merge-add-on-for-google-docs#merge

Smartsheet does have Consulting Services available that could help you build a more custom solution that leverages the Smartsheet API.

Here's a link to more information about that:

https://www.smartsheet.com/custom-consulting

Hope this helps!

-Gwyneth