Issue with a simple Excel sheet and email delivery

[knightaudit]

Let me start by saying that I am not a tech person so dealing with the Email configurations is not something I can do. My company has an excel sheet that we send to our clients for orders. It has a simple drop down and auto fill function added. This allows them to select their client name and it will auto fill the address and contact information. 

However, some are not able to use the drop down as when they click it nothing happens and some are unable to send it back by email. I have tried researching this online and nothing seems to work over all so I thought who best to ask than the LTT community to see if they can think of anything. 

Hope you can help and look forward to your responses. 

 

Thank you

[Dedayog]

31 minutes ago, knightaudit said:

Let me start by saying that I am not a tech person so dealing with the Email configurations is not something I can do. My company has an excel sheet that we send to our clients for orders. It has a simple drop down and auto fill function added. This allows them to select their client name and it will auto fill the address and contact information. 

However, some are not able to use the drop down as when they click it nothing happens and some are unable to send it back by email. I have tried researching this online and nothing seems to work over all so I thought who best to ask than the LTT community to see if they can think of anything. 

Hope you can help and look forward to your responses. 

 

Thank you

Their security can strip the macro and drop down functions from Excel sheets.

 

They need to talk to their IT department about it.  Seen it often as we deal with financial institutions and banks that restrict a ton of stuff.

 

Maybe make it a Google doc for them to access that way.  It's sometimes easier for the IT folks to allow a website than alter email security maybe.

[mariushm]

When Excel sheets are downloaded, a "flag" marks them as unsafe, "downloaded from internet" and by default those excel sheets will open as read only and usually there's a yellow bar saying that, and you have to click on that bar to enable editing.

 

Then, some companies will disable macros and scripts by default for files received through email, as protection against viruses.  It could be whatever antivirus they use may strip out any scripting that's not generic formulas.

 

[Monkey Dust]

For a sheet that has to be emailed around, I'd avoid macros. As noted, macros can get restricted, especially from outside sources. Though you can absolutely do drop-downs in Excel without macros.

 

Another issue might be different versions of Excel. If something in your sheet uses a feature not present in the version your customer uses, that could be causing the problem.

 

If your company has Microsoft 365, you could use Microsoft forms.