The files that you download and open in Excel contain a few hidden columns. You can only copy the contents in these columns after you have made them visible in Excel.

There are two ways to do that. Either way, you first have to select all columns: click on the square in the upper left corner of the Excel worksheet, where the row headers and the column headers meet. All columns wil be selected.

• drag the first column a bit wider. All columns will be set to the same size and become visible.
  OR:
• right-click on a random column header (A, B, C…) and select “Make visible”. This will apply to all selected columns. You wil notice at least one column that expands.

Only then you’ll be able to copy the complete contents of the file. Remember to always copy ALL rows, including all the top rows!

The tent cards indicate where each visitor is seated. They have a front and a reverse side. On the reverse side, several agendas can be shown. For special meetings, there’s an option to make it identical to the front side.
You can edit your preference in your profile. To get there, click the ‘Edit more’ button:

Then look for Table Card reverse side:

The ‘Slightly shuffled 20 points’ is highly recommended. It schedules the ‘Door Prize’ before excusing the visitors.

Select your preferred version. Don’t forget to scroll all the way down your profile and Save it! 

More on the agendas, including images of the various options, you can find here.

Registered users don’t have to worry about this: the member list will be there automatically. If you’re new and don’t want to register (yet), please read on.

By default, the first page in your PDF is a placemat (Meeting Notes Report) for making notes (A4 or Letter format). You can set up the list of member names yourself. It’s a one-off operation. Create an Excel file, exactly like the one you can download from BNI Connect (menu Reports > Chapter > Meeting Notes Report). You can add telephone numbers in the Notes column. Copy/paste the entire worksheet contents into the appropriate textbox when making the weekly materials. Don’t forget to save the file to make amendments when members join or leave.
Another possibility is to copy/paste the whole contents of the Connect pop-up after you click “Go”. Watch the first minute of the instructional vid.

Only when registered:

• a placemat to take notes will be created automatically, listing:
  • all visitors
  • all members
  • open classifications*
  • upcoming feature presentations*
  • candidate members*
  • upcoming trainings – whatever you’d like to add*
• you can save various static info (like price, city) so you won’t have to type the same every week again

* to be updated manually

The free tools on this website allow you to try out (for a whole month) the visitor sheets, featuring table cards, receipts, badges and feedback forms. Whether you’re registered or not. With just a few clicks you’ll create all these personalized items for ALL of your visitors at once. After a month we’ll give you the option to register. It’s € 240,- per year. It’s easier to register and doesn’t cost you extra!

Be sure to follow our guidelines on the mission page for optimal conversion: more visitors will sign up if you do!

Mind you: This is not about email harvesting. We have your email address anyway or we can look it up in BNI Connect if we wanted to. Meaning to say: your info is safe with us.

The placemat can tell you with simple referring numbers who invited who and who is substituting who. To let Layoutserver know who’s a BNI member you must edit the “suffix” field in Excel after downloading it from Connect. 

• If the word “BNI” is mentioned anywhere in the suffix field, (BNI) will be added behind their names on the Meeting Notes Report.
• In previous versions, this field coudl also be used for pointing out the substitutes but we found a separate column in the Spreadsheet for this. 
• Duo-memberships are not really advised but in case you have two people alternating on one chair, we made it possible. Only one name is registered in BNI Connect. When the other member of the shared membership will join the meeting, he or she must be entered in BNI Connect as a Subsititute. The code to mention in the suffix field is “duomember”. Your name, telephone number and occupation in the memberlist will be replaced by those of your BNI-duopartner, who must be registered as substitute. 

By default, all members and guests are listed with their company name, their specialty (or profession) and their telephone number. These have a 40 character limit and will be truncated by […]. Normally this should leave enough space for making short notes. However if you’d like to have more space, you can opt to hide the specialty/profession. You can also hide the telephone number if you like.
There are to checkboxes in your profile to take them out of the layout.

You can turn off placemat creation in your profile preferences. Just tick the box to skip the placemat entirely. You’ll need to make an account first.

Although we don’t think you will need hyphenation in this layout, there is a way to enter soft-hyphens: you can use the pipe-character for that, it looks like this: | (on my keyboard: shift + backslash)

It will only be visible as a hyphen – at the end of a text line, when a word is actually hyphenated.

No, sorry.

This layout is not suitable for entering tables. Templates with tables need special care and pre-formatting. For this template, the tab characters that come over from copy/pasting the spreadsheets are indicators that help us to see what contents is where.

The system fits the chapter name under the fixed BNI logo.

We do have an option for custom logos in place but we don’t encourage anyone to use it. Better stick to the BNI-format instead and create a corporate uniformity.