Convert table to background

Sorry if the title is misleading. Basically, trying to make a form for taking notes on the fly. I need 4 quadrants, which I set up with a table. Sometime's I'll print this to handdraw notes in, and what I have works fine for that. But as it is right now if I try to use it electronically I can overwrite my headings, I might want to write text across a few boxes and can't, I'm generally confined to the table. What I want/wanted was NOT a table, simply borders to create my 4 quadrants, with the ability to type whereever I want and not disturb the underlying borders/captions. I really couldn't find anything online that pointed in the direction I'm going, so thought I'd throw it out here to those who are a bit smarter than me. Any help would be appreciated.

Sounds like you'd be better off creating your note pad as a table in MS Word rather than Excel.

If you share what you have in Excel we might be able to produce an equivalent document.

I did make it in Word, and I wanted to attach it, but ever since we got OneDrive my saved documents go to lala land and I can't browse to them. For instance, it's saved in my Documents folder, but if I browse to any of my multiple (now) Documents folders it's not there, and if go to Quick Access it's not there, but I can go to Word and open it right up. Grrr!

So, it IS a Word doc, and I'd be glad to attach it, just not bright enough to do it.

UPDATE: Hours later, "POOF!" it shows up in my files. Gotta love Microsoft!

Maybe do it like the attached document.

See: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...9-be436107e3b7

Hmmm, I see that. Looks nice. So I could type into each box, and the text would wrap in the box. That could work for electronic entry. And for printed or handwritten notes I could print my original form, or this one minus the sample letters.

Did you make this from a Table? Thanks so much for creating it.

You're welcome. Thanks for the rep.

I made it from YOUR table. Just inserted some extra rows, adjusted the height of the rows, added shading, and lightened the border under the headings. But the big deal is it is locked/protected. You can't over-write the headings.

Text should wrap in the input boxes and you can press Enter for new lines. I didn't fix the sizes of the input boxes so they will push the boxes off the page if you input too much data.

I'll maybe have a look at that later. Going out now though so it will be a while.

Thanks for what you did. I'm not a big Word user so had no idea on how best to approach this. I think if things start sliding off the page I'll have to use a smaller font, but it would be nice to have continuation boxes maybe on the next page. Not sure how that would work.

This is a better version. If you fill one of the two top input boxes, they will extend and, eventually, push the bottom input boxes onto page 2 (after about 23 lines of input).

BUT, with this version, the headings will stay with the input boxes. Basically, you can have quite a lot of input.

If you are using this electronically, it doesn't really matter if it's more than one page (does it?)

And you can print a blank copy for handwritten notes (I've removed all the test characters).

Interesting experience for me because I've never done this type of thing before either.

Thanks so much TMS for wading into a new field for you, too. Leila at https://www.xelplus.com/ had an article on efficient notetaking and a 4 quadrant grid was one of her recommendations. I thought it was a good idea so decided to see how easy it was to create. Not so easy for me, but with your awesome help a piece of cake. I'm hoping this will help because I'm in a new role and one of my new duties is as notetaker, something I'm not very good at. So thanks so much for helping me to do my job better!

It's good to get help from a fellow countryman. Though my parents were born and raised in Texas, I was born in Mildenhall. Even though I left at 18 months and grew up all over the world (Air Force brat) I've always considered England my home away from home. I hope to come visit it someday.

Looks good and seems to work well on an iPad.

Don't be afraid to pause meetings to clarify and document actions, to allocate ownership of those actions, and to set timescales for completion of those actions. IMO, that’s the most important part of note taking at meetings. Don't get bogged down trying to document the discussions.

Good luck.