I'm using MS Word 2003 and Windows XP Professional. I'm creating a bid form
and would like to link it to Access for easy entry of names (customers),
phone numbers, etc. I have my Word document saved as a template and have
inserted form fields in the appropriate locations. I don't want to link an
entire Access table. In other words, I just want to be able to click in the
form field and easily choose the customer's name for that particular bid form
and have the phone number associated with that name automatically show up in
the phone number field. The customer list is quite long. Do I need to do
something in Visual Basic?

Hi ?B?Q2FycmllIEI=?=,

I'm using MS Word 2003 and Windows XP Professional. I'm creating a bid form
and would like to link it to Access for easy entry of names (customers),
phone numbers, etc. I have my Word document saved as a template and have
inserted form fields in the appropriate locations. I don't want to link an
entire Access table. In other words, I just want to be able to click in the
form field and easily choose the customer's name for that particular bid form
and have the phone number associated with that name automatically show up in
the phone number field. The customer list is quite long. Do I need to do
something in Visual Basic?

In Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), yes. I'd probably choose to display a
UserForm (custom dialog box) that fills a list with the information from Access.
This isn't hard, but it's not usually the first kind of macro one should
undertake...

In the MailMerge FAQ on my website, in the "special merges" section, you should
find a link to the file WdAcc97.zip. This describes how to bring data into Word
in ways Mail Merge can't manage. As I recall, one of the examples shows how to
pull Access data into a Word form, for writing a letter. You could certainly use
this as a basis and, instead of putting the data into bookmarks drop it into
regular form fields. The syntax for putting data into a form field:

ActiveDocument.FormFields("Name").Result = "text here"

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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