For an idea of what's possible, see: https://www.msofficeforums.com/word-...tml#post119230


The source workbook for the dropdowns is in post #3 of that thread. Some of the coding complexity in the template is a consequence of the way the data were laid out in the workbook and could be simplified with a more suitable worksheet layout.

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Cheers,
Paul Edstein
[Fmr MS MVP - Word]

Thanks Paul. I like the idea of a single Excel workbook with multiple worksheets as the source. My template does not require the ability to add items like the example in your link does, so that complication could be avoided. But I see a few issues with my template that don't exist in that example:

1. Each slave dropdown would need to include list items not only from the sheet corresponding to the item selected in the master dropdown, but also from a different sheet that applies irrespective of the item selected in the master dropdown.

2. An item being selected in a slave dropdown should result in particular text being shown in the corresponding paragraph in the output portion of the template. I know this is a basic function, but I couldn't get it to work. Can it be done by a series of IF statements for each paragraph that cover each possible list item in the corresponding slave dropdown? (In my Mac version, I put the long series of IF statements in a separate document and bookmarked it, and used INCLUDETEXT to bring it into each paragraph of the template. The IF statements referred to "ParCurrent", and for each paragraph in the template I defined the corresponding combo box as "ParCurrent" before the INCLUDETEXT formula)? Incidentally, to refer to a dropdown list in a formula do you use the title? Seems logical but it didn't work for me.

3. The particular text generated for most of the possible slave dropdown list items would be a fixed string. But a few of the list items would need to generate text that includes information input by the user into text fields in the input portion of the template, and one particular list item (as described in my original post) would need to generate text that depended on which checkboxes are checked by the user in the input portion of the template.

Any ideas how those issues might be addressed?