Extracting Data from Word 2007 forms

[Brian Young]

I created a form for our agents to reduce the amount of paperwork they have
to carry with them. I decided to use a form in Word 2007. Now they're
wanting to be able to extract data from these forms to upload to a database.
I am having trouble finding a good way to extract this data in office 2007.

My question is what is the best way to go about doing this? I've seen
discussions on how to do it from office 2003 but can't seem to use the same
procedure in '07. Do I need to create a Macro, VBA code, or is there some
simpler way to do it that I've overlooked?

 

[Jay Freedman]

On Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:37:01 -0800, Brian Young <Brian

I created a form for our agents to reduce the amount of paperwork they have
to carry with them. I decided to use a form in Word 2007. Now they're
wanting to be able to extract data from these forms to upload to a database.
I am having trouble finding a good way to extract this data in office 2007.

My question is what is the best way to go about doing this? I've seen
discussions on how to do it from office 2003 but can't seem to use the same
procedure in '07. Do I need to create a Macro, VBA code, or is there some
simpler way to do it that I've overlooked?

You may be able to export the field contents from each document into a
..csv (comma-separated variables) file. You may be able to import that
file directly into the database, or you may open it in Excel or
another spreadsheet.

In Word 2007, go to Office button > Word Options > Advanced. Scroll
down to the section labeled "Preserve fidelity when sharing this
document". Check the box for "Save form data as delimited text file".

When you save the file as a Plain Text (*.txt) file, it will contain
only the text from the fields, separated by commas. Open this file in
Excel, and a wizard will lead you through specifying the kind of
formatting -- select the comma as the delimiter.

 

[Graham Mayor]

See http://www.gmayor.com/ExtractDataFromForms.htm

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Brian Young]

Ahh, thanks for the replies guys. Yes, this should get me by in the mean
time. Though, I get the feeling that once I start doing this they'll want me
to start dumping the data in to sql databases. I've seen some mention of VS
2008 being able to create addin's for office 2007 you guys have any useful
tidbits on this?

 

[Graham Mayor]

The short answer is that Visual Studio 2008 can be used to create add-ins
for Word, but its use is way out of context for this forum. Try a Visual
Studio group if you want to explore that. Maybe you could start with
http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/t-sql-programming/writing-to-word-from-sql-server/

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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