Form Fields, Protect Form, Mail Merge, Templates vs Documents

[QA info]

Help for completely self-trained user:

I've just started a new job and I'm having difficulty with their documents
being inefficient, but I don't know enough yet about the tools to be able to
fix them. So, I have some simple questions, and I'd appreciate some feedback
on our current or my proposed procedures.

Right now our verifiers work from a protected form with form fields, but
occasionally they need to change some of the parts that are protected (adding
an additional category to a field), so the "protect" ends up being toggled on
and off several times. This might be fine.

What the verifiers currently do is to take the partial information that we
receive about the clients, type it out into one of the forms, cut and paste
it into two or more additional forms, save them each as unique documents,
then work from these documents while they are on the phone to the client.
What I'd like to do is fill in each of those forms simultaneously with the
supplied information before assigning them to the verifiers. I think I need
to use mail merge to do this, and I've figured out the basic steps on how to
do it. After the merge is complete, I'd like them to continue to fill out the
form while on the phone. I'm assuming it makes sense to have the merged
document come out with form fields still on it and the document still
protected so that the verifiers don't inadvertantly change the form. I've
already gotten some help about how to do this, but it won't make sense to me
until after I study it for a while.

Lastly, and, this seems like a stupid question to me, but I'm also unsure
about the difference between a template and a document, and whether there is
a difference about how they behave. Isn't a template just a partially
complete document?

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

For information about templates, see
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/CreateATemplatePart1.htm and
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Customization/WhatTemplatesStore.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA
http://word.mvps.org

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

While I have given you some information in response to your posts in the
mailmerge fields newsgroup, possibly what you should really be using is a
userform.

See the article "How to create a Userform" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Userforms/CreateAUserForm.htm

or, see the following pages of fellow MVP Greg Maxey's website :

http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Create_and_employ_a_UserForm.htm

http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Populate_UserForm_ListBox.htm

and for better record keeping, see the last of the following series of
articles

http://www.mousetrax.com/techpage.html#autoforms

Please Fill Out This Form
Part 1: Create professional looking forms in Word
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=22

Part 2: Adding Automation to your Word forms.
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=46

Part 3: Learn more VBA (macros) to automate your forms.
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=119

Part 4: Use custom dialog boxes in your Word forms
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=127

Part 5: Connect your AutoForm to a database to save input time and keep
better records!
http://www.computorcompanion.com/LPMArticle.asp?ID=136


--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com

 

[QA info]

Thanks Doug! I'm pretty sure that's what I'm after. I have a lot of reading
and learning to do!