How to vertically align two columns in a Quote PDF, one with labels, one with values?

Question

I am trying to make a template with perfectly vertically aligned labels and values. On the left, a column with labels. On the right, a column with corresponding values. In the quote template design, it looks perfect. But when generating an actual PDF, the labels and quotes are hopelessly misaligned. When you use address fields or fields that are not always filled, it gets really ugly.

I have tried many things with blank spaces and sections. What kind of works, is a separate section for each pair of label and value. But that wastes a lot of space, it does not look nice and the space on the page is not used efficiently.

What I use now: one cell in the left column, which displays a custom Quote field and one cell in the right column, which displays another custom Quote field. The custom fields are text formulas, this is what they look like:

Labels:

"Naam bedrijf en rechtsvorm:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Contactpersoon:" & BR() &
BR() &
"E-mailadres contactpersoon:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Correspondentieadres:" & BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
"Vestigingsadres:" & BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
"Telefoonnummer:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Faxnummer:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Factuuradres:" & BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
BR() &
"PO-nummer:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Bedrijfsnummer RDW:" & BR() &
BR() &
"RDC Klantnummer:" & BR() &
BR() &
"Dossiernr. Kamer van Koophandel:"

Values:

Opportunity.Account.Name & BR() &
BR() &
Contact.FirstName & " " & Contact.LastName & " " & BR() &
BR() &
Contact.Email & " " & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingStreet & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingCity & ", " & BillingPostalCode & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingCountry & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.ShippingStreet & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.ShippingCity & ", " & ShippingPostalCode & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.ShippingCountry & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.Phone & " " & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.Fax & " " & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingStreet & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingCity & ", " & BillingPostalCode & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.BillingCountry & BR() &
BR() &
"______________________________________________" & BR() &
"______________________________________________" & BR() &
Opportunity.Account.RDC_nummer__c & " " & BR() &
BR() &
Opportunity.Account.KVK_nummer__c & " "

The extra " " characters in the values formula are needed to deal with empty fields.

Now I have perfect vertical alignment, at the cost of ease of maintenance and loss of markup. Does anybody have a better idea? I raised a case, with Salesforce, but the only thing they say is that similar issues are under investigation by R&D.

Answer 1

It's probably not what you want but there should be an option to override the template with Visualforce page.

Last time I touch the point&click templates was about 3 years ago. Back then relative simple requirements could not be implemented. I remember using richtext fields to inject custom CSS, even partly successful. But soon I made the decision to switch to custom quote generation.

Not sure if the capabilites where upgraded since then, but my impression was that this feature pretty low prio.