Customizing PDF documents in NetSuite does not have to be a daunting task. This series of articles will suggest tips that will help you to customize PDFs quickly and efficiently.
1. Familiarize yourself with the languages
There are two editing modes for the advanced PDF in Netsuite; WYSIWYG and Source Code. I prefer to use the source code because it is more versatile. The source code syntax of Advanced PDF is made up of three languages; HTML, CSS, and Freemarker. If you do not have experience with these languages, assistance for structuring the syntax can be found on https://www.w3schools.com/ and https://freemarker.apache.org/. These tips are tools you can use when modifying your PDF printouts.
2. Familiarize yourself with table layouts
Table layout is the way websites used to be structured in the early days of the internet. Though one can technically delete all the tables and structure the PDF with a more modern HTML <div> structure the table structure seems more suited for the PDF printout. There is a lot of information on tables out there especially on https://www.w3schools.com/ so get to know the difference between <th>, <tr>, and <td> tags and their limitations.
3. Make sure your table structure is consistent throughout your table
To get your data to show uniformly you will need to follow through with any colspan, rowspan, and alignments when adding rows to the table. For example, if each cell in the beginning of a row is using three columns, any additional cells should use three columns etc.
4. Space your headers efficiently
Users can size and resize logos, titles and other header information to get the header spacing just right but this work could take hours. Instead, for large headers, look in the body tag for a CSS declaration of header-height. Adjust the percentage to lower or higher to increase the amount of space that the header uses. Same thing for the footer.
5. Shrink body padding to get more information on the page
The body tag also has the padding CSS declaration. To fit more on the page, you can adjust the padding of the body by lowering or increasing the numbers. The four numbers in this declaration represent in order the top, right, bottom, and left.
6. Expand your paper size options
In the body tag you can specify a different paper size other than letter or legal. Determine the size you want and use it to replace the size specified in the paper size declaration. Paper size names and dimensions can be found at https://www.papersizes.org/a-paper-sizes.htm
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