How to Use the Layout Designer Tool in QuickBooks 2019 – Part 1
Watch the QuickBooks 2019 video tutorial about the Layout Designer Tool. Learn about designing a layout for your forms. We will show you how to move around objects, resize objects, modify text, use copy format and upload a logo.
Okay, welcome back! We are working in module ten and we’re customizing forms in this particular module. We’re all the way down now to section two.
This is the Layout Designer and this is part one of the Layout Designer. We talked a little bit about customizing your forms as far as telling QuickBooks which columns you’d like to see. If there are some extra fields, but now, what we need to do is make it look nice.
Let’s go ahead and flip over to QuickBooks. I will show you how the Layout Designer works.
I want to go ahead and start back on the Home screen (just in case you got out of the options where you were customizing your template there). We’re going to go back and click on Create Invoices again.
Make sure you’re under the Formatting tab and choose Manage Templates. Make sure you’ve clicked on the one you just created or the one you’re trying to edit and then click OK.
We went through this earlier. Where we were actually using our logo. And then, we were able to change the font for all these options over here.
So, let’s go ahead and look at additional customization, which is where we were just a few minutes ago over in section one. Now we can go down to the Layout Designer.
This is what the Layout Designer looks like. You can’t make this screen any bigger. So, I’ll just pull it over a little bit. So, you can see it. Basically, it has a couple of things here that I want you to be really familiar with.
If you’re familiar with working with any kind of graphics type software, then a lot of this you’ll already know how to do.
But, if you notice you have a blue line around the edges of your page. That’s your margin. If you decide that you’d like to change that margin, when you look in the bottom left of this window, and it says Margins, you can actually go in and type in the actual margins that you’d like here.
The other thing I want you to notice is that you have these blue dots all over your screen. Those are your grids. You can change the spacing between your grids if you’d like. Grids actually help you line up your objects.
Down at the bottom, where it says Grid you can actually change it from a 16th of an inch. Where it currently is to maybe an 8th of an inch as an example. You might not want to see it at all, or you might want to check or uncheck the snap to grid option. What that means is, if I take one of these boxes back here (which is actually called a placeholder) and I move it closer to a grid, it will snap to the closest one, and that helps you line up your objects.
When you look at these boxes back here, these are what we call placeholders. A placeholder can actually have text in it. It can have a picture in it like this.
Any time you have a placeholder, and you’d like to change the size of your object, you can grab these control handles as they’re called around the edges. See the little boxes. When you put your mouse on it, you’ll get a double black arrow. It lets you change the size of your object. If you want to move the object, just click right in the middle of it. Then, move it wherever you’d like it to be.
Sometimes, when you’re moving objects around, and you want to get them very close together, it’s kind of hard with your mouse so one thing you can do (if you notice the little space there) is you can actually use your up and down arrows on your keyboard, or your left and right arrows to get things lined up a little bit nicer.
Some other things to notice. When you’re looking at these different placeholders, here! Some of these have a gray box around them. Like these! Some have a black darker box around them. Those are your borders. The darker ones do print. The grayer ones are just there to show you the outline of your object.
The other thing is at the bottom of your screen. You’ll see a checkbox that says; “Show Envelope Window“. When you check that, you’ll notice these green windows that appear here. I call those, “windows“. Because, what happens is if you fold this invoice, and put it in a window envelope. That’s where the window is. So, it’s really going to help you line these up perfectly.
I’m going to go back and uncheck that.
Let’s talk a little bit about some of your properties. When you click on an object you’ll notice you can change the properties here. If you select more than one object and you would do that by holding down the Shift key, notice you can’t access the properties.
That’s kind of a pain! Because in most graphics programs, you can select more than one object, and change everything at once. But here! We can do it. Then we’ll be able to copy it. I’ll show you how to do that in a little bit.
I’m going to select my title. I’m going to the Properties option. Now, you’ll see I can change the text, the border or the background.
Let’s start with the text. The text within my object I can left align it, right align it, center it, or indent the first line of text. It looks best on the left. So, I’ll leave it there for now!
You’ll notice, I can also change the font options down at the bottom. If I’d like to change the actual font itself I can do that. If I’d like to actually change this to bold or italics, I could do that.
I can change the size. I can change the color down here. If you wanted to put a strikethrough effect here, you could. You can see it puts a line through your text. You could underline it if that’s what you wanted to do.
I’m going to click OK and then OK again so you can see what it looks like.
Now, you’ll notice that Rock Castle and the word Construction is missing at the end of this. That’s because my object is not wide enough. I’m going to grab this right control handle and drag over to the right a little bit. I’ll just move this picture out of the way. But, as soon as I have enough room here; you’ll see I can see all of my text now.
I’m going back to Properties. The next thing you’ll see is the border options. This particular placeholder does not have a border around it. I’m going to add one. Top, bottom, left, and right in this case. I can also have rounded corners instead of square corners. I’ll just choose, large. I’ll change the color.
Then, I’ll also go in and change the pattern and the thickness. Instead of a straight line, I might want dots, dashes or a double line and I might want this to be thick. Now, let’s click OK and see what it looks like.
Here’s a great example of needing to actually change. The height of my object up and down. So, I can see my title a little bit better. In order to do that, it looks like have to select a couple of these, and move them out of the way.
The next thing I’ll want to do is take this. Move it down a little bit. So that, I can actually change the height of my title. You can see it right there.
One more thing. Let me go back into the Properties. Word or Excel, this looks very similar to that. I’m going to select where I’d like to copy my formatting from. Then, you’ll notice this Copy Format option. Notice, my mouse now looks like a paintbrush.
If I click in the Bill To placeholder, notice, it has the exact same formatting. See that? You have to go back and actually click End Format to turn it off (and look at the background). This is going to be your fill or the color in the background of your object.
I’ll just choose this color and click OK. Now, you’ll see that I act here to look just like your title does as far as the formatting? You can actually copy the formatting.
If you’ve ever used the Format Painter option in Microsoft Word or in Excel, this looks very similar to that. I’m going to select where I’d like to copy my formatting from and you’ll notice this Copy Format option.
See, my mouse looks like a paintbrush now. If I click in the Bill To placeholder, it has the exact same formatting. See that? You have to go back and actually click End Format to turn it off.
Now, what if you wanted this Bill To here, or this Ship To here to look just like your title does as far as the formatting? You can actually copy the formatting.
Now if you want to undo you’ve got several undo’s you can use over here. See, there’s redo as well. I’m going to move this picture up a little bit and talk to you a little bit about some things you can add.
The first thing you can add is a textbox. Now, let me show you what a textbox actually looks like. Let’s say, in here I wanted to say 2018 Company of the Year.
All I have to do is type it in there. Then, I have the same options that I can change for the text, the border, and the background. I’m going to go ahead and click OK here and notice where it put my textbox. I’ll just move it up underneath this picture.
Now, if you notice this is getting pretty busy here. Let’s say, I don’t want to use the Ship To because I don’t ship anything. Notice that I just held down the Shift key to select them both. Now, I can use the Remove option right up here.
Now, that that’s removed. I can do a couple things! Maybe I want to change the size of this a little bit. Maybe, I’d like to move this a little bit, change the size of it. Let’s say, we want to put it right down here. And let’s say that we want to move our textbox underneath it there.
If I wanted to take that border off of my textbox, I’d just go back to Properties. Take the border options off, and then when I click OK it just looks like some generic text sitting out there. I’ll just make this the same size as that just to make it look a little bit nicer.
A few more things we’re going to be able to add. If you go back to Add you can add a data field. These would be any fields in QuickBooks that are not currently in this particular template you’re looking at. Any of these, at all you can, select them and click OK.
You can see where it put account number. I’ll just move this and stick it right up here so that this can be one of my fields. I work with a little bit later.
Another thing you can add is an image. If you had another picture you wanted to add. You can just come in and find that image on your computer and add that.
You can also copy any of these. If you wanted to copy this picture, you could certainly do this or if you wanted to remove it, (you saw earlier) you could remove it using this option here.
Let’s go ahead and stop the video here. Then, we’ll go on over to part two. Then, we’ll finish talking about these options for the Layout Designer.
Cindy McGuckin
Cindy McGuckin is an IT trainer with over 20 years of experience. Cindy currently manages the IT Training Department at Trident Technical College, she's a Member of the Association of IT Professionals, Charleston, SC chapter and the Treasurer of the South Carolina Association of Continuing Higher Education.Cindy is a Microsoft Office and QuickBooks expert and her online courses have received hundreds of 5-star reviews. Her no-nonsense approach to teaching complicated topics makes her classes engaging and interesting.
