Understanding the Excel File

Many people have a good understanding of Excel. It is very easy to use for many tasks, and allows multiple rows to be copied and pasted with ease. You will find these types of tasks are common in designing forms, and Excel is well-suited for being an editor for your CRFs. This file consists of multiple worksheets, which will be explained later.

You may have noticed that the file was saved as an XML file. Excel files typically have "XLS" extensions, but the template has an "XML" extension. This is known as an XML Spreadsheet. Office 2003 and the latest 2007 support this type of file format, which is required for the CRF Generator to function.

Should you forget and save a file in the default Excel (xls) format, you will get an error like the following should you attempt to submit the file to the generator.

To correct this, you will need to perform a "Save As" on your Excel document, and select "XML Spreadsheet" as the type. Once you do this, you can resubmit your forms.

As mentioned, there are several worksheets that comprise the study (CRF) design. The tabs in the document are described in the table below, and provide you with a summary of various design elements.

Understanding Errors

When you submit the Excel specification, there are checks performed on the file. A list of these errors is displayed in favor of the "Download" link that will show if there were no errors.

An example of an error list is shown below: