[mso] Re: Word Forms ?

See...now in this case, what I would do is write my own little procedure
that would...
* send a locked form to customers
* when I get the form back, click a button to have all the data entered into
a waiting database...this would also serve to retain this important
information
* have a second "report" document that, when another button is clicked...all
the relative data from the user would be sucked back out of the resulting
fields in the DB and placed into bookmarks in the second document. 
* this version would be opened that you could manipulate to your heart's
content!

Accepting the data, storing the data to a DB and retrieving the data into
your report would probably take all of 3-5 mins...long enough to open docs,
click buttons and wait for the network/DB to react and then print the doc.
Granted...a little longer for formatting that might be needed...but if the
second doc was properly created, all the formatting should be entered. Just
some text manipulation and maybe a spell check would be left as grunt work. 

But then that's what I do as a document specialist/solution provider...turn
big projects into quick, money saving processes that get the job done in the
least amount of time and effort!<wink>


Dian D. Chapman
Technical Consultant, Instructor
Microsoft MVP & MOS Expert Certified

Free MS Tutorials: www.mousetrax.com/techtrax
Free Word Tips & Tricks eBook: www.mousetrax.com/books.html
Learn VBA the easy way, thru video! www.mousetrax.com/techcourses.html


-----Original Message-----
From: mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:mso-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf
Of Jim
Sent: Wednesday, April 21, 2004 10:08 PM
To: mso@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [mso] Re: Word Forms ?

Thanks Glenda, Linda, & Dian

The company provides word 2k on the network, and I doubt that they ever
apply any updates/patches either (contracted through CSC).

Some of the fields may only get 3 to 20 characters entered in them which
isn't a big deal, however most of the fields end up being more like 1/2 to 2
pages long, and there could be 15 to 35 pages like this, way too much to be
routinely retyping.

My only reason for using fields was I was under the impression that once a
document was 'protected' that the fields were the only parts that could be
altered, not the document layout. Am I mistaken here?

We send this out to internal customers to get their requirements, when we
receive it back we typically unlock the document and it becomes our working
document. Now that we've tried this for a few months we find that we are
re-typing all the data from the fields into the document and then deleting
the fields, this is very time consuming and since our users are not touch
typist prone to mistakes. I/we were hoping to find a way to 'move' the data
from the fields into the document itself and delete the fields.

For the future I think we will just send the customer an unlocked document
with no fields, if they mess it up, they mess it up.

Meanwhile I'll check out Dian's article.
Thanks
-Jim-


Glenda Wells wrote:

>Hi Jim.
>
>I've experienced the same thing you have as far as the form fields go.
>Please don't get discouraged.  Forms are terrific and have many, many 
>good uses.  On the other hand, the problems, depending on what you want 
>to do are annoying.  To resolve your specific issue, what I've done in 
>the past, is print the form as adobe then copy/cut/paste from the 
>result.  This often saves formatting, tables, etc.
>
>(please don't yell at me diane) Personally, I wouldn't use a form field 
>if the text is going to be very long.  Most of my forms have fields for 
>things like name or address but if I have fields that require whole 
>sentences or paragraphs, I tend to use tables. I put a button on forms 
>that turn off protection after a person has filled in the form fields 
>so they can move on to the table type fields.
>
>  
>

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