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Spreadsheet-style planning pads?


essayfaire

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I am trying to find planning pads that are the notebook equivalent of an Excel spreadsheet(though I don't expect them to do calculations for me).  I want horizontal orientation, in chart form, that I can use for a number of projects.  It doesn't need to be wall mounted or self-propping.  Something like a household chore chart one would give to children, but with no pre-filled boxes or days of the week.

 

Yes, I know I can print out my own pages, but I'd rather buy a notebook with nice paper and use the sheets as I need them - which means they should probably be perforated so they can be detached.

 

I have found horizontally-oriented notebooks that I could draw out, but I don't want to do that every time.  Does anyone have any suggestions?  Thanks.

Festina lente

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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I think you want a columnar pad.  Most popular style is for ledger entries but you might be able to find something more generic.

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The closest thing I can think of is the Maruman Mnemosyne N180A Imagination Notebook in A4.  It has a 5 mm grid (on one side only), with perforated pages, and a title and date/number line at the top.  The paper is very FP-friendly.  Of course, you'd have to fill out column and row markers however you like - nothing but the grid is pre-printed.

 

Meanwhile, after much fun looking at paper on Amazon, I've concluded you're not likely to find what you're looking for.  It's either all pre-printed (chore / meal planners, for example), or not what I'm imagining you want.  And it's almost impossible to find anything in landscape format.

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3 hours ago, essayfaire said:

I want horizontal orientation, in chart form, that I can use for a number of projects.

…‹snip›…

I have found horizontally-oriented notebooks that I could draw out, but I don't want to do that every time.  Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

I'm not sure what you mean by spreadsheet-style, “in chart form”. It's easy enough to find planning pads in landscape orientation, bound at the long edge of the rectangle, with preprinted 5mm line grids (or even dot grids); I bought a stack of them cheaply from Daiso, and then there are the ubiquitous Rhodia pads. However, data columns for whatever application are not going to already marked out for you at appropriate widths, as a matter of course; and column and row headings/labels will not be demarcated from the data ‘cells’ with differently coloured or weighted lines. So, essentially you must draw your own structure on each sheet, especially if you want the notepad product to be suitable for use across a number of projects, which I take to mean different applications.

 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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@LizEFI actually gave a family member one of the Mnemosynes, though I don't think they called it "Imagination Notebook" at the time.  I was hoping to get lighter lines, more akin to the microdots on this notebook:

large.IMG_2024.JPG.a092d8b3ce107aa6b10f84cdb61c6bac.JPGlarge.1129064299_IMG_20232.JPG.fb48ba96a7cff076f019617bb90d0ec6.JPGas I don't really want visual clutter that I did not create and do not need.

 

@A Smug Dill, where did you say you found your notebook that is like this one?  I can't recall.

 

 

1 hour ago, I-am-not-really-here said:

Funny!

Festina lente

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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19 minutes ago, essayfaire said:

@A Smug Dill, where did you say you found your notebook that is like this one?  I can't recall.

If you mean that Profolio, in the US they're available from Anderson Pens, Goulet Pens, Goldspot Pens, and sometimes Amazon, though I wouldn't go there for this as their packing process tends to be indifferent at best.

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3 hours ago, essayfaire said:

@A Smug Dill, where did you say you found your notebook that is like this one?  I can't recall.

 

 

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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Clairefontaine makes A4 wirebound notebooks with graph (grid) ruling that would work. You can use them in either portrait of landscape orientation. Landscape would work well for a large spread sheet.

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5 hours ago, essayfaire said:

as I don't really want visual clutter that I did not create and do not need.

 

So just get blank sheets that are thin and/or translucent enough for you to have a suitable ‘project’ template show through from under it while you fill in the data ‘cell’ contents.

 

Otherwise, the Rhodia No.38 DotPad (product numbers 38558 and 38559) should have less preprinted visual clutter than lines with pips, and the page size is huge (which makes it oh-so-perfect for ‘spreadsheet’ style artefacts, including lots of empty space for unused columns and rows the way one often sees in the Microsoft Excel application window) and in landscape orientation, with perforations ready for deliberate tearing but the sheets are not otherwise likely to fall out of their own accord. Surely that ticks all the functional and qualitative requirements stated, never mind the price per sheet?

I endeavour to be frank and truthful in what I write, show or otherwise present, when I relate my first-hand experiences that are not independently verifiable; and link to third-party content where I can, when I make a claim or refute a statement of fact in a thread. If there is something you can verify for yourself, I entreat you to do so, and judge for yourself what is right, correct, and valid. I may be wrong, and my position or say-so is no more authoritative and carries no more weight than anyone else's here.

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1 hour ago, A Smug Dill said:

the Rhodia No.38 DotPad

Yes!  I love that thing.  It's huge. :)  Just begs for lots of complicated or gigantic stuff to be scrawled all over it. :D

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What is the ideal ratio of height to width for your special grid?

 

Perhaps graph paper that has more than one level of grid. You could cut a larger box in half.

 

This one has three line widths. Turn it sideways and thicken half of the mid-weight lines.

https://www.amazon.com/Graph-Paper-Architects-Engineers-Designers/dp/1657947734/ref=mp_s_a_1_30?crid=2EYELXU3HCPLM&keywords=graph+paper&pscroll=1&qid=1664596375&qu=eyJxc2MiOiI1LjA0IiwicXNhIjoiNC40NiIsInFzcCI6IjQuMzkifQ%3D%3D&sprefix=graph+pape%2Caps%2C436&sr=8-30&wIndexMainSlot=58

 

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If you look up the Laconic notebook line, available through JetPens, you can see a notebook specifically designed with a layout called a "spreadsheet" layout.

 

Laconic Style Notebook - A5 - Spreadsheet | JetPens

 

This is the closest I have seen to a generic spreadsheet book, outside of your standard graph paper or more specific ledger paper. 

 

Another option if you want to paste it up on a board or something is to print the grid that you want as the backboard and then use some onion skin paper at the front charting paper. Some other thin papers could also work, like Tomoe River or Midori MD or the Kokuyo writing pads. 

 

The Seyes ruling from Clairefontaine notebooks is also very spreadsheet like, but maybe too busy. I think the recommendations from everyone above are also quite good. Kokuyo has a nice smart grid layout that is also in the same vein as many of the above, and works well for creating ledgers, since you only need to mark where you want your column stops. 

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3 minutes ago, arcfide said:

If you look up the Laconic notebook line, available through JetPens, you can see a notebook specifically designed with a layout called a "spreadsheet" layout.

 

Laconic Style Notebook - A5 - Spreadsheet | JetPens

Very cool!  How did I not know about these?  (I tend to surf paper on JetPens as a form of amusement...)  They even have a Gantt chart one.  Go figure.

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6 hours ago, LizEF said:

Very cool!  How did I not know about these?  (I tend to surf paper on JetPens as a form of amusement...)  They even have a Gantt chart one.  Go figure.

 

If it turns out that I like the paper on these, they may become my new "productivity suite". The layouts are very well designed, including the Todo list ones, which seem well suited to the Pomodoro Technique or other types of type boxing. I will likely pick up the Gantt chart version and see if I like it. 

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7 hours ago, arcfide said:

If it turns out that I like the paper on these, they may become my new "productivity suite". The layouts are very well designed, including the Todo list ones, which seem well suited to the Pomodoro Technique or other types of type boxing. I will likely pick up the Gantt chart version and see if I like it. 

I'm now pondering the Gantt chart one for story timelines, with different characters / groups on each line and the date boxes showing when their story line takes place... :)  Seems like a fun distraction from actually writing... :rolleyes::glare:

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Thank you everyone! I did track down the Profolios but they don't seem to come in additional sizes, etc.  The Laconic looks like a good future to top off a future JetPens order; the Meeting version actually seems more useful than the Spreadsheet version- I think the latter looks like a calendar!

 

@A Smug DillI think that No. 38 is probably the closest I will find.  Thank you. I don't usually buy Rhodia, so this was not on my radar.

Festina lente

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence

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Sounds like you are looking for something like accounting columnar pads. Available in up to 13 columns wide. Those are roughly 8.5 x 17. I have a 4 column I use. They are punched for standard 3 hole. The paper is reasonably fountain pen friendly as well. 

Brad

"Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind" - Rudyard Kipling
"None of us can have as many virtues as the fountain-pen, or half its cussedness; but we can try." - Mark Twain

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