Hi Word community, I want to understand whether I can use the field-codes as an alternative to Bookmark/Cross reference. Here's my issue. My last page in my document is intended to be a data entry page for another database. I want it to consolidate data entered into the rest of the preceding document so an administrator can manually load into a separate database. I have tried the bookmark/cross reference approach but it keeps failing. Not always...can't crack the logic (very frustrating).



Scenario
There is a bookmarked cell in a table on page 1 with the words '[enter content here]'. That bookmarked cell is cross-referenced on the back page. When new data is entered into the bookmarked cell, and the Update field option chosen...it errors. Having done a bit of research I was thinking, the field codes allow content entered in one section to automatically update in another. I knew someone who was a Word wiz who suggested people should adapt that functionality more...lost contact with him. Dam

Can I use these instead? If yes, how? Am a novice in Word automation. Have ruled out the data entry form

Help pls

Actually, while I use Windows 8 and MS Office 2013 at home, it really needs to work on MS Word 2010 at work. Don't know if that is a factor or not

Hi Francara,

If you use content controls or formfields for gathering the initial data inputs, you can get by without the data entry form at the end of the document - simply tell Word to use the "save form data as delimited text file" option (see under File|Options|Advanced>Preserve fidelity when sharing this document) before re-saving the document. Word will then generate a CSV file with the data, ready for importing into the database.

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

Hi Paul, appreciate the quick response, and thanks for thoughts. As usual, the full story is hard to tell accurately in the limited space.
The full document is a contract summary template, which gathers the user's inputs. Some of the content entered into the front of the document is used for entry into a contracts database...some is not. There is also additional database content that is added directly into the last page (the last page is therefore a collection of sourced data from the preceding pages, and raw data entered directly into it). The idea is to make the role of database data entry simple for the Admin person (as in they don't have to look through the document for the relevant data...just the back page).

Not sure if that helps with potential solution or not (and if your initial suggestion is still appropriate)

Thanks

Hi Francara,

Even though some of the 'form' data might not go into the database, having the extra data in a CSV output file shouldn't be an issue, because having the data in that format also means you can programmatically add them to the database rather than having someone re-key them. The whole process becomes faster and less error-prone - simply point a file-picker from the database at the CSV file and let the code behind it do all the processing.

If you're wedded to using the data table at the end of the document, see: http://gregmaxey.com/word_tip_pages/repeating_data.html

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