MS Office Genius Required - Word Project

[RankinC]

Scenario:
We have a word document that contains over 50 pages with around 300 seperate paragraphs relating to different subjects. These paragraphs need to be inserted in to a letters that go out to the public. Currently our typist is computer literate and is capable of either copying and pasting or having the most used in her auto text and inserting into the letters.

The Problem:
The typist is going on maternity leave for the next 11 months and the manager wants the officers who do the inspections to create their own letters using these standard paragraphs. These people are not computer literate and are saying it is going to be to difficult for them to do.

Can anyone think of a way of making this process so idiot proof that they would be unable to complain.

Any help would be much appreciated.

 

[RankinC]

Yes there is but only when the inital visit is done. What I meant in the previous thread was that you cannot put the most commonly used into autotext.

 

[Norie]

Sorry I don't understand.

First you say there is no way to determine the paragraphs.

Then you seem to indicate the paragraphs are determined by the fault(s).

Note, I wouldn't actually recommend using AutoText.

 

[RankinC]

I have no intention of using Auto text due to the amount of paragraphs that are available.

The paragraphs can only be inserted into the letter once an inspection has been completed (i.e. the faults with a premise have been recognised by the officer).

What I was trying to asy was that I couldn't place the most frequent paragraphs into autotext because they can vary form one inspection to the next.

What are the possibilities of creating user forms, how would the paragraphs be pulled into the user form?

 

[VicRauch]

Sounds like you would like for the officers to be able to call up an Access application, look down a list of paragraphs that are available to put into the letter, select one (or more?), if more than one order them? (1, 2, 3, etc.) and then have Access build the letter from the selected paragraphs?

I create my invoice in Word from an Access application. Would you be interested in using this as a "template" for your application? I have about 30 to 40 hours invested in this portion of the application.

 

[RankinC]

I would love to use Access, unfortunatley MS Access is not supported by our IT department and therefore we are not allowed to have it installed on PC's

 

[Guillermo]

Hello RankinC,

If you only need to look among 300 paragraphs each time I think you could do with Word alone.

However, as someone pointed out, you need to come up with a way of determining which paragraph to retrieve. Based on keywords? Is there a reference number for each fault/paragraph...? Your typist must have had a clue about that. If she was relying on memory alone, then your problem needs to be approached differently.

Also, please note that you CAN automate the process of adding new AutoText entries. I can't tell you how many you can add or the maximum string length allowed, but in any case you don't have to do it manually.

Hope this helps,

Guillermo

 

[VicRauch]

OK, you can't use Access, Sorry! But, what application would you feel the most comfortable using (that you can use) to store each of the paragraphs? I'm thinking Excel, with one paragraph per cell, and all paragraphs in column A. That way, to retrieve a paragraph, you would be refering, from Word, to "A2", or "A166", or which ever paragraph. If you had a listing (on paper) of all the paragraphs, numbered to match which cell in Excel the paragraph is stored in, it should be a fairly simple routine in Word to use the Input box to ask for a paragraph number, retrieve it from Excel, then paste it into Word.

 

[Norie]

RankinC

The whole thing could be done in Word, without AutoText.

I would suggest a userform with a listbox and a document (template) containing all the paragraphs.

Each of the paragraphs would be bookmarked.

That listbox would contain descriptive titles for each paragraph.

Then the user can select the appropriate paragraphs from the list, press a button and have code delete the unneeded paragraphs.

The code would look something like this

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
    For i = 0 To ListBox1.ListCount - 1
        If Not ListBox1.Selected(i) Then
            ActiveDocument.Bookmarks(ListBox1.List(i)).Range.Cut
        End If
    Next i
End Sub

Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()
    For Each bk In ActiveDocument.Bookmarks
        ListBox1.AddItem bk.Name
    Next bk
End Sub

If you want I could email you a working example.