Re: Want to write up quick balance sheet, etc. Via tables?

[Suvayu Ali]

On Mon, Sep 09, 2013 at 12:17:52AM +0200, Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:
> dkcombs@panix.com (David Combs) writes:
> 
> > MY QUESTION:
> >
> > How to make it easy, almost foolproof, to be able to quickly format
> > the stuff I type in.
> 
> 
> Type stuff:

 [...chomp...chomp...chomp...]

> Select it, type M-x align-cols RET and get:

 [...chomp...chomp...chomp...]

With orgtbl-mode the OP could get formatting as well as spreadsheet like
functionalities.  To get the formatting the OP could start as:

|cash|20000|short term debt|89000|<tab>

that gives you (with cursor at X):

| cash | 20000 | short term debt | 89000 |
| X    |       |                 |       |

Once you fill everything in, you can use table formulae to do get
spreadsheet operations.  The following example does a column sum of the
2nd and last columns.

| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
| cash |  20000 | short term debt |  89000 |
|------+--------+-----------------+--------|
|      | 120000 |                 | 534000 |
#+TBLFM: @>$2=vsum(@<..@-I)::@>$>=vsum(@<..@-I)

See (info "(org) The spreadsheet") for more details.

Hope this helps,

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.