importing contacts

[Caryl]

My new boss has given me the task of creating 1 place for all of his mother's
contacts. Currently, the contacts are in a: Word document (not necessaily
in a good format), in an Access Database, & in her current "contact list" in
Outlook (either 2003 or 2000- pretty sure 2003.) Some of the "contacts" are
duplicated in the 3 programs, & I also need to enter new contacts. When this
task is complete, I will need to: Create a Mailing list for wedding
invitations & Christmas Card mailing lists so that I can create lables or
print directly onto envelopes, Birthday reminders (Calendar/Report), enable
her to contact her "contacts" via e mail & create a report of often called
phone #'s. The only place that e mail addresses ae located will be in
Outlook. What is my best plan of attack?
I consider myself to be extremely proficient in Word, moderatly proficient
in Access. & a "newbe" to Outlook. I am confident with Publisher & have
used it recently to do a mail merge from Access to print envelopes.
I would love for the "contacts" to be "linked" to one another so that Access
& Outook changes will affect one another. I surely do not want to keep the
Word document.
I will have another project similar to this - after this - BUT - this one
first!
Thanks to anyone who can help! I am confident someone can!

 

[Brian Tillman]

My new boss has given me the task of creating 1 place for all of his
mother's contacts.

This guy sounds like he's abusing his position.

 

[Caryl]

Yeah - tell me about it! Same guy, after my 90 days, had to think about
giving me a 30 cent raise vs his proposed 25 cents for 2 months. You do the
math!

 

[Caryl]

Me again - I guess in all fairness he owns the company.

 

[Brian Tillman]

Me again - I guess in all fairness he owns the company.

But he didn't hire you to do his personal chores, he hired you to advance
the company.

I'd love to be able to answer your original question, and while I could give
some pointers on parts of it, I've never used Access and there's no way I
know to import directly from a Word document. Your best approach is
changing the Word document to a CSV file and formatting it appropriately so
that you can import it. Additionally, Outlook doesn't have any "reporting"
features and can't tell you which phone numbers you call the most
frequently. After all, Outlook has no connection to a phone and can't tell
how often you use it.

 

[Caryl]

Brian - pretty much what I thought. I did figure on ditching the Word file
after I formatted it correctly & exported either to Access or Outlook. But
your info on no "reporting" features with Outlook, tells me that I will need
to export the info to Access. I do realize even Access has no connection to
a phone & can't tell me how often it is used. I just figured the end user
would be able to let me know the names/#'s of most often called people & then
I could use a separate column in my Access table that woul allow me to enter
"yes". Then I could do a report that would only include those names that
have a yes in that column & ignore those that do not.
My main concern now would be to figure out a way for the user to make an
updating change in Outlook & then Access would recognize that a change was
made & therefore be changed in Access at the same time.