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Old 12-20-2019, 08:26 AM
csmall86 csmall86 is offline Auto-populating a word document Windows 10 Auto-populating a word document Office 2019
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Auto-populating a word document
 
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Default Auto-populating a word document

Hi,



I am developing a document for multiple organisations to use.

The specification will contain 10-20 pages of text, which have already been written, but will vary depending on a number of choices and answers to questions (let's say 10). Effectively if they answer yes/no to each, I want the document to autopopulate depending on the answer that is given.

For example if they answer yes to all 10 questions, it would populate everything (20 pages)
For example if they answer yes to 5 and no to 5 it would populate half of the text (15 pages)

1) Is this possible to do in word without using excel and/or Mail Merge?
2) What is best alternative to Mail Merge - i.e. could this be done by hiding text using the 'headings' expand/collapse triangle
3) Does this require VBA of some sort?

Many many thanks in advance!!
Chris
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Old 12-20-2019, 01:54 PM
Charles Kenyon Charles Kenyon is offline Auto-populating a word document Windows 10 Auto-populating a word document Office 2016
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This can be done. It will require someone with knowledge of programming. That programming can be traditional vba or the more arcane field codes.
  • The easy way is with vba - a userform. A userform is a custom dialog box to gather information and act on it. If done using vba, the user has to allow macros to run. The developer has no control over that.
  • The hard way is with fields and IF Fields to test responses and conditionally include text. If done this way, unless the fields are unlinked, all of the information will actually be present in the Word document. If you save as pdf after the choices are made, that would not be the case. After the choices are made, the user would need to update the fields in the document. Also, the IF fields would need to be updated. If done using fields, I would use Mapped DropDown Content Controls rather than checkboxes even for Yes/No answers.
    Field codes can be much more difficult to debug, for me, at least.
Resources:

This is not something you are going to get done in an afternoon. For me it would likely be about a 50-hour project. Others who regularly post here could get it done more quickly I suspect, but it still would not be in an afternoon.
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