word info to a database

[FANJedi]

I'm working with a company that sends out teams to survey it's chain of stores. The surveys are currently kept as word docs (with very specific formatting). The company needs me to create a way to gather the info from these word docs and archive them in a meaningful way. I'm not able to simply have users save the srvey docs as unformatted .txt documents (which could be easily imported into access).

Is there a way to capture info directly from their formatted word documents to Access? Or am I best served by creating custom forms to replace the current survey docs?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

Depending upon the arrangement of the current documents, it may be possible
to use some code the extract the information that you want. Alternatively
some type of form - either in-line or a userform could certainly achieve
your purpose.

For the former, see:

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

To get started with the latter, see the article “How to create a Userformâ€
at:

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

In this case, I would be populating adding document variables to the
document with the data being displayed by means of { DOCVARIABLE } fields
and extracted for use in the database by using code to get the values of the
document variables


--
Please post any further questions or followup to the newsgroups for the
benefit of others who may be interested. Unsolicited questions forwarded
directly to me will only be answered on a paid consulting basis.

Hope this helps
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

I'm working with a company that sends out teams to survey it's chain of

stores. The surveys are currently kept as word docs (with very specific
formatting). The company needs me to create a way to gather the info from
these word docs and archive them in a meaningful way. I'm not able to
simply have users save the srvey docs as unformatted .txt documents (which
could be easily imported into access).

Is there a way to capture info directly from their formatted word

documents to Access? Or am I best served by creating custom forms to
replace the current survey docs?

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?RkFOSmVkaQ==?=,

I'm working with a company that sends out teams to survey it's chain of stores. The

surveys are currently kept as word docs (with very specific formatting). The company
needs me to create a way to gather the info from these word docs and archive them in a
meaningful way. I'm not able to simply have users save the srvey docs as unformatted
.txt documents (which could be easily imported into access).

Is there a way to capture info directly from their formatted word documents to Access?

Or am I best served by creating custom forms to replace the current survey docs?For the existing docs, you can problem use the formatting - if it's as strict as you
imply - to extract the information. Either by automating Word, or "Save as" to RTF or
HTML format, if you'd rather process them outside of Word.

For the future, you could certainly look at using forms, such as Doug outlines.

What might be even more interesting, if the company is amenable to upgrading to Office
2003, could be getting the data in some kind of XML format. There's InfoPath (XML based).
Or there's Word's capability to save to it "WordML" (which you can parse, and Word
doesn't even have to be present). Or there would be the option of a "SmartDocument"
solution, which would also allow you to extract the data from XML tags.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Sep 30 2003)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply in the
newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Charlie]

I'm working with a company that sends out teams to survey it's chain of stores. The surveys are currently kept as word docs (with very specific

formatting). The company needs me to create a way to gather the info
from these word docs and archive them in a meaningful way. I'm not
able to simply have users save the srvey docs as unformatted .txt
documents (which could be easily imported into access).

Is there a way to capture info directly from their formatted word documents to Access? Or am I best served by creating custom forms

to replace the current survey docs?

Yes to both questions.

I've written custom macros for a customer to take strictly formatted
documents, and convert the data to Access. It's not very hard if the
documents are truly consistantly formatted.

Charlie Hoffpauir
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~charlieh/