Collecting values from several writer documents to a calc document

[razz42]

Hi
Sorry if this has been answered but my google-fu or Libreoffice lingo is maybe to bad to find them. I’m a swedish and german speaker, but my english is well enough.

I have several bills that i write in writer and one calc document where I put values like:
-invoice number
-date of job
-date of invoice
-date of payment
-the total sum of invoice
-my expenses

I do this to get an overview of my year and gigflow.

What I want:
I would like not having to do it manually, to either put the values in calc so they appear in a new writer-document, or that I can point to the writer document in calc and it gathers the values to the right field.

I also see this as a learning opportunity.
Thankful for anyone who can point me to an answer, a blogpost about it, where to find it in the manual or even what this process is called technically so I can search for my answers better.

Rasmus

[EarnestAl]

About 10 years ago I downloaded an invoice template, Invoice-Easy2.1-OOo.sxc, from OpenOffice template site. It included invoices with totals recorded to a journal, it used macros to do various jobs. I found it pretty good. I haven’t had occasion to invoice anything recently but I did notice a bit of a flicker in the program last time I invoiced something, to be fair it was designed for OOo 1.1.4.

Anyway, it doesn’t seem to be on the template site anymore but I did a search and the original author hosts it but it hasn’t been updated since then, German language site too. Cheers, Al

[razz42]

Ah thank you. I might try this and maybe update it rather than start from scratch? At least it seems to be possible.

[Lupp]

It’s generally difficult to force a sufficiently clear structure on a Writer document to be able to transfer specific content to a spreadsheet where structure is everything. Anyway you cannot do it without some repeatedly applied handiwork - or based on user code (“macros”).

Basically the task you describe should be seen as something best solved using a database for the data, and forms (implemented with Writer and/or Calc) for maintenance, reports, prints. My personal experience using databases is rather old and insufficient. Therefore I would hope someone knowing better will give you more details. There are “professional solutions”, of course.

In cases not being expected to scale up too much with time, you may use spreadsheets as a poor (but easier to understand??) surrogate for a database. You cannot get, however, many features coming “out of the box” with databases without a lot of “overhead”. I mainly think here of data safety (including backupping), security (access rights), integrity, supported access (SQL based), multi-user features…

If you decide to use spreadsheets, you should (imo) omit the usage of Writer in the project.
Keep, maintain, reorganize,… the data in sheets optimized for the task - and basically “normalized” (up to third normal form e.g.) like databases are.
Add additional sheets containing the formats and the formula apparatus for repeatedly needed “reports” which term here also covers selections, overviews, prints (like your invoices), and much more. The formatting capabilities of spreadsheet prints should be sufficient.

[razz42]

Oh, thank you.
That asnwer scared me a bit but I will try to find a crashcourse on databases.
And remake my invoice to a calc document for easier inclusion in the proceedures, it seems.