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, 35 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!!

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.