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#1
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a
letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#2
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing
you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#3
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
Wow Peter, you really know your stuff.
It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#4
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
You should probably take a look at the following series of articles, the
last in particular: 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 -- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#5
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want
to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#6
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to
remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#7
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
If you're only talking about re-using a really small amount of information
and you aren't doing it very often, I doubt if it is worth trying to introduce any automation - unless you're doing everything /exactly/ the same way and doing it often, the effort of setting up an automated approach tends to be far greater than using a "traditional" method such as copy/paste. What you tend to gain from automation is consistency, but only if each step in the process always works the same way - if, for example, someone decides to add an extra line to the worksheet, all the cell references in your Word document would be wrong and you'd have to change them (and first you'd have to notice that, or someone would have to tell you). Using the traditional method, you'd probably see straight away where the info. was supposed to come from and simply do the right thing. In other words there are benefits associated with automation but there are also costs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#8
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
No, we're talking about a lot of information, co. address, phone no.'s,
equipment required, part No.'s, cost, description and so it goes on. Not to worry. Thanks for your input though. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: If you're only talking about re-using a really small amount of information and you aren't doing it very often, I doubt if it is worth trying to introduce any automation - unless you're doing everything /exactly/ the same way and doing it often, the effort of setting up an automated approach tends to be far greater than using a "traditional" method such as copy/paste. What you tend to gain from automation is consistency, but only if each step in the process always works the same way - if, for example, someone decides to add an extra line to the worksheet, all the cell references in your Word document would be wrong and you'd have to change them (and first you'd have to notice that, or someone would have to tell you). Using the traditional method, you'd probably see straight away where the info. was supposed to come from and simply do the right thing. In other words there are benefits associated with automation but there are also costs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#9
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
In that case I'd have thought doing a global edit find/replace on the file
name would work well. If the fiels are all in the same folder, all you need to do is replace the file name globally then ctrl-A and F9. I'd say that's got to be quicker than filling in loads of different bits of information manually. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... No, we're talking about a lot of information, co. address, phone no.'s, equipment required, part No.'s, cost, description and so it goes on. Not to worry. Thanks for your input though. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: If you're only talking about re-using a really small amount of information and you aren't doing it very often, I doubt if it is worth trying to introduce any automation - unless you're doing everything /exactly/ the same way and doing it often, the effort of setting up an automated approach tends to be far greater than using a "traditional" method such as copy/paste. What you tend to gain from automation is consistency, but only if each step in the process always works the same way - if, for example, someone decides to add an extra line to the worksheet, all the cell references in your Word document would be wrong and you'd have to change them (and first you'd have to notice that, or someone would have to tell you). Using the traditional method, you'd probably see straight away where the info. was supposed to come from and simply do the right thing. In other words there are benefits associated with automation but there are also costs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
#10
Posted to microsoft.public.word.mailmerge.fields
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
What about creating a new sheet that takes all the information you'd use and
puts it into database form so you can just merge it that way? "Peter Jamieson" wrote: In that case I'd have thought doing a global edit find/replace on the file name would work well. If the fiels are all in the same folder, all you need to do is replace the file name globally then ctrl-A and F9. I'd say that's got to be quicker than filling in loads of different bits of information manually. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... No, we're talking about a lot of information, co. address, phone no.'s, equipment required, part No.'s, cost, description and so it goes on. Not to worry. Thanks for your input though. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: If you're only talking about re-using a really small amount of information and you aren't doing it very often, I doubt if it is worth trying to introduce any automation - unless you're doing everything /exactly/ the same way and doing it often, the effort of setting up an automated approach tends to be far greater than using a "traditional" method such as copy/paste. What you tend to gain from automation is consistency, but only if each step in the process always works the same way - if, for example, someone decides to add an extra line to the worksheet, all the cell references in your Word document would be wrong and you'd have to change them (and first you'd have to notice that, or someone would have to tell you). Using the traditional method, you'd probably see straight away where the info. was supposed to come from and simply do the right thing. In other words there are benefits associated with automation but there are also costs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
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Merging Data from a Quote Sheet to a Letter in Word
Yes, you could do that. MERGEFIELD fields are typically more
straightforward than having a load of links. But you may find yourself having to apply formatting switches to those merge fields and so on. At some point you would still have to point either Word or the new sheet (if it was not the one containing the source data) to the correct source of the data. Why not just try it? Only you can really judge which approach is simpler and more reliable in the situation you're in. Peter Jamieson Elly wrote: What about creating a new sheet that takes all the information you'd use and puts it into database form so you can just merge it that way? "Peter Jamieson" wrote: In that case I'd have thought doing a global edit find/replace on the file name would work well. If the fiels are all in the same folder, all you need to do is replace the file name globally then ctrl-A and F9. I'd say that's got to be quicker than filling in loads of different bits of information manually. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... No, we're talking about a lot of information, co. address, phone no.'s, equipment required, part No.'s, cost, description and so it goes on. Not to worry. Thanks for your input though. "Peter Jamieson" wrote: If you're only talking about re-using a really small amount of information and you aren't doing it very often, I doubt if it is worth trying to introduce any automation - unless you're doing everything /exactly/ the same way and doing it often, the effort of setting up an automated approach tends to be far greater than using a "traditional" method such as copy/paste. What you tend to gain from automation is consistency, but only if each step in the process always works the same way - if, for example, someone decides to add an extra line to the worksheet, all the cell references in your Word document would be wrong and you'd have to change them (and first you'd have to notice that, or someone would have to tell you). Using the traditional method, you'd probably see straight away where the info. was supposed to come from and simply do the right thing. In other words there are benefits associated with automation but there are also costs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Peter, thanks. That is a great way of doing things and I'll be sure to remember it. However, given that a new quote sheet will be filled out each time it'll mean saving it under a new name and therefore not making the job any quicker as i'll still have to alter the filename in the word document (which could take as much time as just filling it out with the same detail as the spreadsheet). Any other ideas? Thanks "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Let's suppose your quote sheet has 2 cells at (say) C7 and E3 that you want to use in your Word document. let's suppose that the values you want are always in those cells and only the filename changes. If you select cell C7 in Excel and Edit|Copy, then in Word, Edit|Paste Link and select Edit|Paste Special, select the Paste Link radio button, then select "Unformatted text", then click OK, then Word should insert a LINK field - use Alt-F9 to view its code, which might be something like { LINK Excel.Sheet.8 "C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls" "Sheet1!R7C3" \a \t } The result should be the text from the Excel cell. So assuming all the data comes from the same worksheet, to insert the text from another worksheet, what you need to do is a. replace the full path name C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet1.xls by the new path name - perhaps C:\\Documents and Settings\\me\\My Documents\\My Data Sources\\mysheet2.xls b. select all the LINK fields and re-execute them. If you have used Alt-F9 to reveal all the field codes, you should in fact be able to do (a) manually using Edit|Find/Replace. You can then select the document body using ctrl-A and re-execute the fields using F9. If you have linked fields in other places in your document such as headers/footers then you have to update them separately. You could also do all that programmatically. In fact there is a "proper" way to change the link path name programmatically, but let's not go too far. Is that the kind of thing you need to do? if it's something else, please say how your situation differs. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... Wow Peter, you really know your stuff. It's a little task I've been given as the IT geek within our company. Basically, I have a spreadsheet which guys fill in (as a quote to another company) I then need various pieces of information i.e. customers name and address, cost etc. to then be automatically tranferred to a letter in a word document. My issue is that new quote sheets will be raised (from the standard) and I don't think that with a new quote sheet the info can be transferred without redirecting word to look in the right place. Of course I could be completely wrong so therefore bow down to your infinite wisdom. Thanks Elly "Peter Jamieson" wrote: Are you trying to get information from specific cells? (the sort of thing you might do using copy/paste from Excel into Word?) Or are you trying to get information from a table within Excel (Where you might be mailmerging from Excel to Word?) If it's "specific cells", then yes, if the cell locations move around, you wil have difficulty extracting the information unless you are able to ensure that the relevant cells are always identified using the same Range names in Excel. The trouble is that whoever prepared the Excel sheet in Excel would have to know how to do that. If it's "table and mailmerge", then you should be OK as long as the column names do not change, and even then it's a question of re-linking to the Excel sheet and altering your Word document to match. If you are trying to automate this kind of stuff it's important to ensure that whatever you implement puts the values you want to re-use in known places where other applications always know how to get them - i.e. some overall system design is needed. Peter Jamieson "Elly" wrote in message ... I'm trying to lift information from a quote sheet in Excel to appear in a letter in word - is this possible given that the sheet would change with every new quote? |
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