Invoices in Word?

[jayC]

I am creating a business database in Access. I am wondering where the
invoices are supposed to be created.
Are they supposed to be created in Word as a merge document? If so, how
does one format fields in Word for currency.
I have Office 2007

Many Thanks

 

[Beth Melton]

I would use an Access report to create the Invoices.

Word and mail merge could be used but I suspect you are working with
one-to-many relationships and this isn't the easiest to do in Word unless
you know SQL. Not only that but if you insert the "many" side of the
relationship as a Database field in Word you need to do your formatting in
Access using a query and the Format function and use your query as the data
source.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[DL]

I do mine via reports I have created in Access

 

[Joseph Meehan]

It depends on how fancy you want it. Using Word merge documents allows
you to have more complex formatting and graphics. Access reports make it
easier and faster.

 

[jayC]

No its not one to many. How would I have Word show the number fields as
numbers with 2 decimal places?

 

[Beth Melton]

If you have a business database that involves invoicing then it should
involve one-to-many relationships since one "customer" could have many
invoices and one "customer" could have more than one "line item."

To format a merge field in Word, add a numeric picture switch such as: \#
"$#,##0.00" at the end of the merge field. For example: {Mergefield Amount
\# "$#,##0.00"}

But again, if you are creating an Access database an Access report for your
invoices would be *much* easier than trying to create them in Word. Is your
hesitation to use an Access report for this task due to not knowing how to
design Access reports? Such as concatenating fields (such as combining City,
State Zip or sentances using your data fields), or controlling pagination
(such as adding a page break between invoices), etc If that's the case,
these are easy things to learn.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/

 

[jayC]

I might be interested to learn that at a later date.
If you know of a good source for a step by step instruction for creating
invoices in Access report as there are none in MS Help.

Also, what is the best newsgroup to post to for general questions about
Word?

Many Thanks.

 

[Beth Melton]

Here are a couple resources on relational Access databases in general (note
these do not contain information on Reports but might help with your
database design which makes query/form/report creation easier):

Access Terminology and Relational Database Concepts
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=73

Normalizing Access Data
http://pubs.logicalexpressions.com/Pub0009/LPMArticle.asp?ID=88

I looked around for a good tutorial on creating Access reports but didn't
see anything specific to what you are looking for other than this overview:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/access/HA012307391033.aspx

If you encounter specific questions the folks in the Access Reports
(public.access.reports) group can help you out.

For a specific Word newsgroup, there are several. For general questions you
can use the General Questions (public.word.docmanagement) group, for mail
merge questions use Word Mail Merge and Fax (public.word.mailmerge.fields.)

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email cannot be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Coauthor of Word 2007 Inside Out:
http://www.microsoft.com/MSPress/books/9801.aspx#AboutTheBook

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/