I think you first have to some detail analysis in order to determine which solutions are the most feasible:

1) How many different products do you need to accomodate. You'll need to define what a product is; eg. "gloves" or does it depend on manufacturer.

2) What's the maximum number of rows required ? In the case of gloves, you mentioned a "heading" row, a total row, and 1 for for each color (how many possible colors ?)

3) What's the maximum numbers of columns; 1 for a descriptions, 1 for each size (how many sizes, and what other quantities are we dealing with ?), 1 one cross total.

4) Is each cell of the same "type" ?; eg. numeric. What is the precision.

5) What sort of edit rules do you need ?

As for forms in formsets or pages in pageframes, you need to talk to the user in terms of how they do their work: eg. Do they call up one product at a time and enter all the quanties (by size and color, for example), or do they "bounce around" multiple products at the same time. If they work "serially", you only need to have one form or grid "active" at one time; they enter their order, save it, then "call up" another product.

You also have to consider "revisions". Will the users simply be entering their order, which is then "exploded" into an order database and then that's the end of it ? Or will you need to be able to "suck" this back into the original data entry format ? Or will revisions be accomplished using a different data entry format ?

You'll have to look at this thing from beginning to end.

>I think that we would need the kind of control over the individual Excel cells that we have in a VFP grid.
>For example readonly, combobox so that they can choose a discount, etc.
>The more I think about it, the more that I want to use a VFP grid(s) or a form with text boxes (as you suggested).
>I think that one of the main advantages (from the client's perspective) is that they can scoll up/down in an Excel spreadsheet and see the various groupings of gloves.
>If we did not use a grid we would need either multiple forms in a form set and/or multiple pages in a page frame to accomodate the 100's of SKUs.
>A grid would facilitate the scrolling ....
>Your thoughts?
>
>
>>I still think it's doable, Allan. If you want to bounce around ideas, I'm open.
>>
>>>Gerry,
>>>
>>>There are many more items.
>>>Actually, this was only an example.
>>>Each of these 'grids' is probably about 2 * 2 to about 10 * 6 plus columnar headings and another couple of lines to describe the product group as shown.
>>>Some of the cells will have to be protected because a particular colour/size may be not for sale.
>>>There will be probably be about 20 of these 'grids'.
>>>
>>>>This looks like such a "small" grid (5x4), I would simply use a VFP form with textboxes and use array reference to the textboxes.
>>>>
>>>>I would look at the different products in question and see if the creation of the input forms could be (meta) data driven.
>>>>
>>>>>I was brainstorming today with one of our clients who is using one of our order entry applications.
>>>>>The appearance of the current application is probably somewhat typical in that the products are in the grid and each line has the item #, description, price, quantity (entered by user) and extension of the line.
>>>>>He mentioned that several of the endusers would rather see the input screen in a spreadsheet format such as:
>>>>>
>>>>>Gloves - Leather
>>>>>Mens
>>>>>Colour S M L XL Total
>>>>>Black
>>>>>Brown
>>>>>Grey
>>>>>Total
>>>>>
>>>>>The endusers would enter the qty's per colour/size and Excel would calculate the totals both for the colour and the size.
>>>>>Also, each colour/size would be a different item #.
>>>>>
>>>>>From a tecnical viewpoint, I would prefer not to use a hardcoded Excel template but build the speadsheet in VFP 7 and invoke Excel. When they are finished, I would want to bring the data back into VFP 7.
>>>>>
>>>>>Has anyone done something similar and hopefully point me in the right direction?
>>>>>TIA.