Mail Merge with Form Fields

[Lisa Harris]

How can I create a document with form fields that can be
filled in post-merge?

The merge form has form fields already in it. With the
merge data toggled on, we can fill in the form fields,
print the forms, and they're perfect. But if they're
saved and emailed to an outside party, the merge form is
looking for the data source, which doesn't exist on the
outside party's system.

If I merge to a new document, the form fields are
obliterated. Any way around this??

Thanks for any input.

Lisa

 

[Doug Robbins]

Hi Lisa,

The two features are not compatible. One reason for that is that each
bookmark in a document must have a unique name and when you execute the
merge, there would be multiple instances of each of the formfields and hence
of the bookmarks assigned to those fields.

You could however probably modify the following macro to insert formfields
into the merged document:

' Throwaway Macro created by Doug Robbins to "preserve" bookmarks during a
mailmerge
'
Dim abm As Bookmark, bmrange As Range, i As Long, Result As Document, j As
Long, k As Long
Dim Target As Document, Letter As Range, source As Document
Set source = ActiveDocument
i = 1
For Each abm In ActiveDocument.Range.Bookmarks
System.PrivateProfileString("c:\bookmarks.txt", "bookmarkNames",
"bookmark" & i) = abm.Name
abm.Range.InsertBefore "#"
abm.Range.InsertAfter "#"
i = i + 1
Next
With ActiveDocument.MailMerge
.Destination = wdSendToNewDocument
.Execute
End With
Set Result = ActiveDocument
For j = 1 To Result.Sections.Count - 1
Set Letter = Result.Sections(j).Range
Letter.End = Letter.End - 1
Set Target = Documents.Add
Target.Range = Letter
k = 1
Selection.HomeKey wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
Do While .Execute(FindText:="#*#", MatchWildcards:=True,
Wrap:=wdFindContinue, Forward:=True) = True
Set bmrange = Selection.Range
bmrange.Characters(bmrange.Characters.Count).Delete
bmrange.Characters(1).Delete
Target.Bookmarks.Add
System.PrivateProfileString("c:\bookmarks.txt", "bookmarkNames", "bookmark"
& k), bmrange
k = k + 1
Loop
End With
Target.SaveAs FileName:="Letter" & j
Target.Close
Next j
source.Activate
Selection.HomeKey wdStory
Selection.Find.ClearFormatting
With Selection.Find
Do While .Execute(FindText:="#*#", MatchWildcards:=True,
Wrap:=wdFindContinue, Forward:=True) = True
Set bmrange = Selection.Range
bmrange.Characters(bmrange.Characters.Count).Delete
bmrange.Characters(1).Delete
Loop
End With


--
Please respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
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consulting basis.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP