Sometimes your customers might ask you for a rental catalogue – especially if they’re customers whose opportunities are primarily dry rentals. Use the export function in OnRent Events along with Google Sheets to create a list of products that you can print, download, or publish for your customers.
How this works
Export your products from OnRent Events.
Open in Google Sheets.
Cleanse and format the data.
Print, download, or publish.
Export your products from OnRent Events
First, head to System Setup > Export Data, tick the product checkbox, and choose Export to export a list of products from OnRent Events. The exported file will then be delivered to your linked email address as a .csv file.
You’ll receive an email with a link to grab a CSV spreadsheet file of all of your products. You may also head back to System Setup > Export Data to download a copy of the file. Ensure your email settings allow notifications from OnRent Events to avoid missing the exported file.
Can’t access System Setup? Only administrator users have access to System Setup. Chat to the person in charge of OnRent Events at your company to get access or copies of the export.
Open in Google Sheets
Once downloaded, open the file in Google Sheets. It’s free to create a Google account and start using Google Sheets. Alternatively, you can use Microsoft Excel or other spreadsheet software to view and manipulate the file.
Cleanse the data
Delete columns that you don’t need
The product export from OnRent Events includes all of the fields against your products in OnRent Events. You probably won’t want to show all of your customers these, so delete any columns you don’t need.
If you’d like to show product pictures, keep the “Image URL” column – we’ll come back to this in the next step.
Sort the data by column.
You might like to sort the data by column, e.g. product group. Use the sorting options in Sheets to do this.
Delete rows that you don’t need.
Don’t want to show all of your products in your catalogue? Delete rows to remove products from it.
Format the spreadsheet
Change colours, fonts, and text sizes to get the spreadsheet to match your branding.
Add product images
Exports from OnRent Events are in the CSV spreadsheet format because it’s a widely compatible format – most computers and many apps can open these spreadsheets.
One caveat of using CSV files is that they’re technically plain text files, which means we can’t include embedded images in them. However, we include a link to the product’s picture on our servers so you can grab a copy of the image by clicking on it.
Google Sheets can automate this for you and automatically download all images from the links and insert them in a column. Use the IMAGE function to do this.
Add a column
To start, add a column to the left of the “Image URL” column. Give your column a name if you like.
Insert images
Click in the cell where you’d like the first image to be displayed, then type =Arrayformula(image(B2:B100)) , where B2:B100 is the cell range where your image URLs are in the spreadsheet.
Hit ↵ return And Google Sheets will download each of the images.
Resize rows
To change the size of the images, adjust the height of the rows.
Hide the “Image URL” column.
We no longer need the “Image URL” column, so we can safely hide it.
Print, download, or publish
When you’re happy with the way your spreadsheet looks, print, download to PDF, or even publish a link that you can share with your customers.
In Google Sheets, click File > Print to print your sheet.
Download to PDF
Use File > Download as > PDF document (.pdf) to download a copy of the file to PDF.
Publish
Generate a link that you can share with your customers by clicking File > Publish to the web.
Accessing Import Spreadsheets
To access import files for products and stock levels in OnRent Events, follow these steps:
Locate the OnRent Events User Guide, typically shared during onboarding or available through the support portal.
Find the section with instructions and links for downloading import spreadsheets.
Download and use the import files as detailed in the guide. Refer to the user guide for complete instructions or contact OnRent Events support for further assistance.
