Format those damn Excel files all at once!

Anyone who has worked with litigation support or as a paralegal for any time at all has wastered a lot of time formatting Excel spreadsheets. Whether for to get them ready as exhibits for a depositoin or for some other reason, you need to make sure that the PDFs or hard copies of the Excel files contain all of the columns from each worksheet formatted in a way to make easy for witnesses and attorneys to review. Format Copier, available at: https://www.excelcampus.com/tools/format-copier/ provides a solution. See this sample data set from the EDRM Enron data set. You begin with poorly formatted Excei files that split columns across more than one page, have hidden rows, and are not landscaped - see figures 1 -4 below.

Open 'Format Copier v1.2.xls' . On the worksheet of this Excel file named, "Income Stmnt" you can enter the formating details you want on each of the Excel files you're going to process. In my test run of Format Copier I set it for legal paper, landscape orientation, all columns on one page, and added the worksheet names and the pages numbers to the footer. The default worksheet template contains no hidden rows or columns, so you're all set there.

You then go back to the worksheet named, 'Format Copier'. See Figure 5. Open all of the Excel files you want to process, as as separate files on your PC. Go back to the Format Copier spreadsheet and click on the red button named 'Format Copier'. A new window will appear.

See Figure 6. Using the control and shift keys select the open Excel files you want to process and check off the relevant formatting options. Click RUN. Unfortunately you need to save each file after it's processed.

As you can see in Figure 7, the Excel files have been re-formatted to something that can be easily read in PDF or hard copy form.