Hello. Over the years I have become more knowledgeable of MS Access and all the things it can do, realizing that I only scratched the surface. I think that's where I am now with MS Word 2007. And I need some expert advise.



At work our new boss wants a weekly activity report. He has 10 specific topics he wants captured. I'll call them Topics 1,2,3,4, 5, .... We have 5 separate departments that will be reporting, Dept A, B, C, D, and E. My staff has the job of pulling everything together into a single report that looks like this:

Topic 1
- Dept A ... (and each department can have multiple inputs for each topic)
-- input 1
-- input 2 ...
- Dept B ...
- Dept C ...
- Dept D ...
- Dept E ...

Topic 2
- Dept A ....
- Dept B ....

So we're doing a lot of copy/paste from multiple Word documents.

I have never done programming in Word but am just asking now - is it possible to automate this - the bringing together of 5 Word documents in a cohesive, structured report like this?

If it is, I need to get started learning how. But right now just want to understand the capabilities of Word. I think I could do this in Access but the majority of folks in our office are much more familiar with Word.

Appreciate any advise from the Word experts on here.

Thanks!!

Kannon

This could be done without programming by simply using an IncludeText field for each report. I don't think I can describe it, though.

Make sure your reports are created using the same template and formatted with a designated heading style for the title. Use other heading styles appropriately for sub-headings. Each of your topics is also marked with a Bookmark (name) in the template.

The reports would be named DeptA, DeptB, DeptC, etc. and put in the same folder with your overall report. You would use the IncludeText field to incorporate their contents. You would be including DeptA#Topic1, DeptB#Topic2, etc. then going to Topic1

When the new reports come in, copy them, with those names into the folder. Open your overall report document and save it with a name that reflects the date. Press Ctrl-A to select the entire document and press F9 to update the fields. Resave the document. Press Ctrl-A again and press Ctrl-6 to unlink the fields. Resave the document.

This assumes that the only fields that are important in the document are the IncludeText fields.

Hi Kannon,

It's quite easy to do this, using INCLUDETEXT fields. See attached.

With the approach taken in the attached files, each department inputs its data into bookmarked one-cell tables - one per topic. Each cell can contain multiple pages of content, including graphics, etc, if need be. When completed, they send their reports to you and you put them into the same folder as your consolidated report. The consolidated report uses the INCLUDETEXT fields to import the bookmarked tables from each department's reports. When you want to generate a consolidated report, simply open it, press Ctrl-A, then F9 to update it before printing. If you set Word's 'update fields before printing', 'update linked data before printing' and 'update automatic links at open' options, you probably won't even need to do that.

If you want to save a permananet copy of the consolidated report, open it, press Ctrl-A, F11 to lock the fields (or Ctrl-Shift-F9 to unlink all the content and turn the fields into just their displayed content), then save with a new name.

Attached Files

Reports.zip (74.3 KB, 33 views)

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Paul - thanks!! I am going to start working on this tomorrow - have to get more familiar with the coding but this definitely shows me it can be done.

Thanks again!!

Hi Kannon,

Whilst Word's Help file will give you some guidance on INCLUDETEXT fields, you won't any documentation on my use of the FILENAME field within it. For an explanation, see post #8 in the thread at: http://windowssecrets.com/forums/showthread.php/102080

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

This is EXACTLY was I was looking for!
HOWEVER, I find that the bookmarks can only be created by first selecting the text boxes.
That means every month when I receive back 10 different reports from 10 different people, I have to go back into each report, select each textbox, and create a bookmark.
Am I correct or am I doing something wrong?

The documents in the attachment I provided don't use textboxes - they use tables. If you format the tables in the A/B/C documents to not have borders, the target document won't have them either. Done correctly, you'll only ever need to do this once.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

thanks alot, Paul

You know, this is all nicely said. But when actually doing it, it becomes pretty frustrating. I thought I (we) had it all worked out. I'll explain what I'm talking about.
There's about 10 team members who have to send to me their monthly reports.
So I have to send to each one a different template to fill out.
In order to not lose the bookmarks, I bookmarked a number of different table cells in the templates.
Now, when importing the whole cell into the target doc, the cell gets misplaced and is not-in-line, especially when the report has outlined numbering.
So I tried making the target doc into one large table and manually insert the outline numbers and chapter headings (they stay the same from month to month). I figured the imported cell box would fit neatly into the large table. But I was wrong. The cell is placed in the lower part of the larger cell, with empty space above it (I think the space is from the field code itself(.
Perhaps you have a work-around, or a completely different method of doing this, Paul?
Thank you very much for at least considering it.

The layout in the target document is affected by the formatting of the paragraph(s) in which the field code(s) are placed. If you're putting the field codes in paragraphs that are themselves aligned differently, that could explain your alignment issues. As you can see from the sample documents I provided, it doesn't have such issues.

__________________
Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]