I've created a lot of forms in Excel, which sum, calculate, highlight, index, etc. I can lock or unlock certain parts of it so that users can only edit the input fields, but it's nearly impossible to format Excel to anything other than a straight up grid. I have different inputs needed, in groups of different sizes, and formatting a spreadsheet like this would take a ton of unnecessarily merged cells, and even then would be hard to print precisely.
Then I stumbled across Publisher. I can layout the forms nicely and precisely in a printable manner, but I lose the Excel capabilities which are essential to my form. So I tried embedding Excel sheets into Publisher. This gives me all the Excel capabilities I need, but I can't reference other embedded objects, so I'm stuck once again with a grid layout.
A more concrete example: On the top of the first page, I have a small input asking for a price threshold. The second page has a list of inventory, and highlights all items over that price, and sums the price of the ones that aren't, displaying it back on the first page. Printing it would give the summary on the first page, and the highlighted list on the second, preferably with all the wonderful formatting of Publisher.
What is the best way to display Excel sheets in a formatted, printable manner?
Finally, though I understand there may be a non-programming related solution to this, I'm happy to look into macros, etc, as well.