I wonder if anyone could solve a problem for me. I have created a word template for the reports we write at work. It is set up as a series of tables (in word 2007) of which the basics are shown when the file is opened. As we inspect premises that could have 2,3,10 or 100 areas I have a macro that adds a new copy of the table from the building blocks within the template. At any given section of this we may run another macro that adds a RECOMMENDATIONS table again from building blocks. This contains space for an area, a reference number, narrative, photos blah blah blah. These recommendations tables can appear ANYWHERE or even NOWHERE in the document, there can be none, 1, 5, 100 etc etc. at the very end of the report I have a very simple table of 3 columns, reference, area and recommendation. This is a summary the client has to have on the sign off page. MY QUESTION (finally) is.... Is there any way that considering the almost random nature and how one document will never be the same as another that I can else either a macro or bookmarks system (bearing in mind the blank tables come from building blocks) to scan the document for the RECOMMENDATIONS tables and copy the 3 required element into the summary table at the end. And repeat for as many recommendations as are in the document. The recommendations table is built up of uneven cell sizes, some are merged to keep the aesthetics pretty any help appreciated. This would help as we currently have to keep scrolling up and down the document cutting and pasting... Quite often through 40-50 pages...

Aside from what appears to be a desire to keep everything in tables, what you're describing could be handled quite easily via a Table of Contents (TOC) field. All you need do is use Heading Styles for the various recommendations (or use switches in the TOC field to employ your own set of Styles). Updating a TOC field to reflect changes to the document typically requires doing no more than a Print Preview or Ctrl-A, F9.

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

Can you have more than 1 toc in a document? The report already has a main toc. The tables are used to maintain uniformity of report styles across the whole team so is a must have.

You can have as many TOCs as you like. You can restrict their scope via bookmarks (to limit them to a particular range) and/or by the Styles they are specified to work with. Thus, if your document uses Heading Styles 1-3 for the main Table of Contents, you might use Heading Styles 8 & 9 for the Recommendations Table of Contents. Neither Table of Contents would then contain any content from the other.

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

Brilliant! Thank you, if nothing else it's a starting point. Not been able to assign bookmarks as the table is dragged from the building blocks bit. Will let you know how this pans out. Thanks

Ok, this almost looks do-able as a toc. Is there any way of having 3 headings on 1 row like:

Heading 1 - Heading 2 - heading 3

Rather than

Heading 1
Heading 2
Heading 3

As this will read as:
Reference number - Affected Area - Corrective Action

Eg:

12/14 - Kitchen - Hole leading through external wall needs to be filled

The document is A4 landscape and this would prevent a lot of dead space.

Thanks in advance

No, a TOC requires a separate paragraph break for each entry.

However, in the probably-unlikely scenario your Reference number, Affected Area & Corrective Action paragraphs all have consistent line counts (even if they're not all the same), you could simulate such a structure with a 3-column table, each holding a separate TOC for the corresponding Heading Styles.

The alternative, once a document has been finalised, is to convert the TOC to text (by selecting it and pressing Ctrl-Shift-F9), then replacing any unwanted paragraph breaks.

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

Thank you so much for your help on this... Learnt over the day to assign the different heading styles, assign ToC styles, get each ToC into a table column and wrote a macro to update all in one go (have to make it foolproof). It works like a treat, although to begin with it kept messing my main ToC at the start of the document (probably before I worked out what I was doing with styles). All good now, thank you again for your help.