Can Excel drive a Word Template?

[dmcarnahan]

I'm currently working on a project to streamline the artifacts created from the software development process. What I have in mind is the following:

1. For any given software project is for the Project Lead to open a MS Excel project template, identify the project type (new, enhancement, bug fix) and then complete a checklist of items to identify the project parameters (i.e., Infrastructure, Integration, UI, Test Plan, User Guide...etc). A checkbox would be associated to each project parameter.

2. A boilerplate template would exist in MS Word format that would contain everything from Software Requirements to Test Planning sections (an all-in-one project artifact template).

3. Possibly a 'generate' button would exist in the MS Excel template and upon clicking it, the MS Word template would open and would only display those sections that applied to the items selected from the checklist.

Does anyone know if it possible to control MS Word from MS Excel this way? Has anyone attempted anything like this before?
Thanks in advance for any tips and advice.

 

[Trevor G]

Welcome to the Forum,

One idea is create in a spreadsheet all the option you want to be shown in the Word Template, use Bookmarks in Word so that code will place copies of filtered data from Excel to the locations in Word.

It can be done.....

In Word you can record macros to use the GoTo (Press F5 on the Keybaord then select Bookmark and then the first bookmark) Command to find Bookmarks once you have the code you can adapt it in the Excel workbook to place copies of filtered data to each bookmark.