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I've been asked by our warehouse guy to help him with an excel spreadsheet to increase his productivity. The problem is, I'm not what you would call an "excel expert". What he wants sounds very simple, I'm just not sure how to do it ...so here goes.

Right now he has a usb barcode scanner. When he scans to an excel spreadsheet the default action after a scan is that it moves down one cell. So, if it's in cell A1, it moves down to B1. What he needs it to do is move in this sequence when he scans: A1,A2,B1,B2,C1,C2,D1,D2 etc all the way down the page. The reason for this is he needs the part and lot number right next to each other. If someone could help me with this I would be eternally grateful. Thanks!

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Is there software installed for the scanner? You could try to adjust the settings. – Robert Jan 16 at 15:30
It's a basic USB scanner. There really isn't a lot of configuration or software. I was thinking this would be more in the format of the cell for an excel spreadsheet template. If someone could help me build a template I could really really appreciate it. Thanks! – Joe B Jan 16 at 15:37
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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote accepted

Select columns A and B

  1. Hit CTRL and 1

  2. Click on Protection

  3. Untick "Locked"

Not sure what version of Excel you have, tags for 2007 and 2010 are in the post, but then:

Protect the sheet, allowing selection of Unlocked Cells Only, should be under the format menu on the Home tab of the ribbon.

Set Excel to move right on Enter, it's under Excel Options, Advanced in Excel 2007 and above.

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This is a great answer! The "enter" or carriage return is either programmed in to the scanner or part of the printed bar code. In either case, changing that won't solve the users problem. Paperlantern's deep knowledge of Excel yields an elegant solution. +1! – Dave Becker Jan 16 at 16:35
This worked perfectly! Thank you so much! – Joe B Jan 16 at 18:33
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up vote 1 down vote

Many of these barcode scanners can be programmed (typically by scanning special barcodes provided in a manual for that purpose) to end the barcode with TAB instead of CR (Enter).

You still need to lock cells that are not to be entered.

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(Note: these are proprietary and specific to a particular make (and maybe model))

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