Hi All

I am looking to be more effective during a lengthy period at work creating letters to customers. I have to gather data (acronyms and shorthand text with dates) from various systems before organising findings in date order. I then make a decision whether or not the correct process has been followed relating to an incident. After this I'm then required to translate the data I gathered earlier on and address in a letter to customers.

I have meanings for all of the acronyms than may arise on various systems and I have built up paragraphs that relate to the rationale behind the business activity so a customer would understand how the various acronyms impacted the service they received.

Could I please ask for some advise on how to be speed up this process using MS word and Excel 2010, possibly access? What functions would I need to engage from those applications? At the moment I’m an absolute beginner and need to get my head around things and would really appreciate some guidance on what I would need to do to achieve in MS office.

I typically issue letters that are about 3 pages long. One page of standard text to every customer, 1 page of text containing about 2 or 3 paragraph clusters relating to the type of incident they experienced (already prepared wording); then a couple of paragraphs translating the acronyms that were assigned on their profiles in order of the dates they took place.

I'd like for the data I gather to be tidied up in an automated way if possible. I start by copying and pasting it into notepad from each system initially but the dates are in order only from each system.
I don’t have any flexibility with gathering the data as my system access is fairly limited
Examples of the data I gather might be:
System 1 - field a: informs me of incidents types and date of incident. I have wording for each type and have to input dates in Word in the format of ‘14 January 2014’ rather than 14/1/13.
12/1/13 (blank meaning status clear)
12/1/13 Gs
10/1/13 GP
6/1/13 Gs
*&**System 1 – field 2: informs me of service usage via mediums. For example Qwe (postal), Asd (telephone), zxc (internet)
Qwe: 13/10/14
Asd: 15/10/14
Zxc: 13/10/14
From system 1 I’d like to be able to utilise my pre prepared paragraphs to explain;
GS 6/1/13=An engineer reconfigured your settings on 6 January. Gp 10/1/13=Your service was interrupted on 10 January 2013. 12/1/13 Gs =An engineer reconfigured your settings on 12 January. 12/1/13 blank= Access to your service has been uninterrupted since 12 January.
*I can see that you have since used your service successfully by postal, phone and internet since
**Only to be included if all dates in field 2 are greater than field 1. I’d like to be more medium specific but feel this take is already very complex for me at the moment.

System 2
Tony call office to ask why not working 7/10/13
Annoyed again having to wait for us 7/10/13
Escalated issue to correct dept told cust 7/10/13
Will update later in week 7/10/13
Cust service unpaid awaiting confirm 8/10/13
From accounts no credit received 10/10/13
Confirm from accounts cust stopped 10/10/13
Payments 2 months ago, do not resume 10/10/13
Service until paid in full with confirmation 10/10/13
From accounts dept 10/10/13
Cust called said payment sent, promised will 12/10/13
Reactivate service after call. 12/10/13
Cust angry service not reactivate needs answer 14/10/13
Accounts inform service blocked, no confirm 17/10/13
Received from cust creditor, acc to remain blocked 17/10/13
Customer call wants answer and service on 25/10/13


System 2 shows me notes added shorthand onto customer profile. Those I can’t quite prepare wording for beforehand to auto populate later. I’d really like to see them in somewhere ordered with data from other systems by date so I can understand the sequence of events.
System 3
Again in a different format;
Date, time, location, units, outcome
Date, time, location, units, outcome
Date, time, location, units, outcome
Date, time, location, units, outcome
Date, time, location, units, outcome
I’d like to populate this within the letters from pre prepared parargahs. Can I create sentences that pull the data from excel or access for this?
In short I think I’m trying to more easily populate and then translate data. Currently I highlight copy then pasted from fields on screen in various systems into notepad were I need to go back and forth to see what took place and when.
I’d like to organise entries in date order so I can see events logically in date order.
Communicate from word letters more efficiently using the data I gathered with prepared customer friendly wording., several letters at a time.
Please share comments freely. I have tried discussing this with many of my colleagues who all say it is not possible yet we are all quite junior and low in ms office skills.

I hope to be able to create a method that has an entry screens for data sets from each system that populates my own database, presents gathered data from each systems in and presents clearly in data order from all data on requested customer, generates letter with data gathered.