Word Fields

[Thomas M.]

Word 2003

I work in second tier support and today I got a trouble ticket on something
that I do not think can be done in Word the way the user wants. I can't
even begin to think of how I would explain this, so I'm just going to cut
and paste the text from my trouble ticket.

*** Start of Ticket ***
"Donovan receives a word document that is password protected and he does not
know the password. It is a phone list that includes not only phone numbers
but also addresses for all counties. Donovan would like to put in field tags
that only he can see for his personal notes such as this employee works
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. He receives updates for this document
periodically throughout the year. He would like to automatically move his
field tags from his current document to the new updated document. He said in
Word Perfect there was a way to do this. He would like to know the way to do
this in Word. Sarah has tried the merge and compare idea in Word but this
does not work for Donovan. It changes the formatting of the original
document and is more cumbersome to enter his notes. They tried Track changes
but he did not like this idea either for similar reasons.

Sarah describes this as having two layers. The first layer is the original
document and then the second layer is one that overlays the first with his
comments. Donovan is pretty adament that he would like to be able to do like
he did in WordPerfect and tab to the fields he creates."
*** End of Ticket ***

My first thought is that if he doesn't know the password to the document it
seems like a moot point! My second thought is that the only way to do this
is with macros, and we don't write macros for the end users, so unless the
user is able to write the macro himself, he will basically be out of luck.

However, before responding to the user I thought that I would check here to
see if anyone knows of a way to do what the user wants to accomplish.

--Tom

 

[Graham Mayor]

The password issue isn't a problem. Obviously she can open the document or
we wouldn't be having this conversation. You can save the document with a
new name without the password, or in the case of a form - see
http://www.gmayor.com/Remove_Password.htm With the document open for
editing, you can add what you want to it. However the rest of the
requirement eludes me.
--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Thomas M.]

Graham,

Thanks for the response. After posting the original message it did occur to
me that a password protected Word file can still be viewed, so as you say
that is not a concern. As for the rest of it, I don't see any way to do
what the user is asking. I posted the message just in case there was some
feature of Word with which I am not familiar that would allow us to
accomplish what the user wants, but really, I've been thinking that the user
is going to be out of luck on this one. However, I may be able to suggest
an acceptably alternative, such as copying the data into Excel or something.
I think that's the best avenue to head down at this point.

--Tom

 

[Thomas M.]

I was able to talk to the user directly (I had been working through a
Network Administrator with another agency) and it sounds like all he wants
to do is have fields inserted into the document that he receives so that he
can do a merge with another data source file. The people who maintain the
document are supposedly willing to insert the fields if they can be shown
how to do that, and then the user that I am helping would just need to
create the data source. That should be doable.

--Tom

 

[Graham Mayor]

In that case it seems to be a simple mail merge document -
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm covers the
rudiments of merge.

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP


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[Thomas M.]

Agreed. Last night I was thinking that this would be easy since I've worked
with mail merges in the past, but this feature in Word seems to have changed
somewhat since the last time I worked with mail merging, which was about 3
years ago. I feel like I know WHAT to do, just not the HOW. In fact, I got
a little frustrated and ended up starting a new thread asking for help on
the how, and I see that Suzanne has replied to that message. Hopefully,
between your article and Suzanne's advice, I will be able to get back up to
speed on this. I don't think it will be very hard. I just need to get
familiar with what looks to me like a revamped interface for the mail merge
feature.

Thanks for you help!

--Tom

 

[Thomas M.]

I read your article, and I agree with the following statement from the
article;

"The interface has been completely redesigned, and simple functions have
been replaced with unnecessary complexity."

I think that I've gotten the user squared away. I was on the right track
the whole time, but was getting confused by the aforementioned unnecessary
complexity. I now have it working about the best it is going to work given
the criteria set down by the user.

--Tom