I'm trying to quote out a price to someone for developing a set of documents to keep track of city billing and I'm wondering whether it's possible to link documents in such a way where a user can input customer information into a database file, then an Excel file can run through and display each value from the Access file into columns under the correct headers, have Excel calculate values from that, and finally set up a Publisher or Word file to grab information from the Excel spreadsheet using Mail Merge to be printed. There also has to be a way to keep track of past bills and payments.

Also, I don't know a whole lot about Access. I'm not sure if there would be a way to easily skip the Excel step or anything. Any ideas as far as that goes would be welcomed.

Additionally, any thoughts or ideas upon whether this might be possible, what would be involved, and how accessible and easy it would be for a low-tech computer user to use would be great. Thanks.

I would do this with Access: open up Access into a blank db

Next, set up your table in Design View

Then for the user, do a form with the Form Wizard to get your data into the table (a table is like your foundation)

You can export to Excel or Word using the Access External Tab > Word or Excel

If there is a lot of calculations, I would go from Access to Excel to Word

Otherwise, I would elect to go from Access straight to Word

Wizards will do the heavy lifting making these transitions

If you have time and know little about Access, check out from your library
"Access 2007 for Dummies" to quickly get up to speed--focus on Tables and Forms

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Best regards
Bjorn