Chapter 9 Form Letters, Linking and other stuff
Chapter Outline
Protected Word Documents (Forms)
Linking/Copying
Linking a
Linking Two WORD documents
Form Letter
Protected Word Documents (Forms)
I talked about protecting a spreadsheet (in earlier
chapters) so that a person can only enter in information in the unlocked cells.
You can do the same thing in a word processing document. Let us use an
Insurance document for Wilderness
The actual form is a little bigger but all the information is about the same. What I want to do is, instead of filling this form out on paper, I want to fill this form out on the computer. I can then save the file as the persons name who signed it along with the printed copy that is actually signed.
What
I am going to do is to delete the tab key pressed for ‘Your name (printed)’ and
insert a form field. In order to do this I need to show the Form toolbar,
Choose View, Toolbars,
Forms to get the Form toolbar as shown in Figure 2. As you can see we
can insert 3 types of fields into our form. I am going to highlight the tab and
click on the Text Form Field button. This will replace the tab with a Text Form Field.
Now you can set the properties for your form field by clicking on the Form
Field Options button. Figure 3 shows the options for a text field (each
type of field has different options).
In the case of a persons name I am going to use the Type as Regular text. Click the list arrow to see what other types you can use. The Default Text is what will actually show in this field until someone types on top of it. I am going to type in a message ‘Enter your name here’ so people know what to do. Maximum Length is how much space you are going to allow them to type in. Unlimited means just that, so I am going to narrow this down to 40 characters. It is easier to just type in 40 than to use the spinners to get to 40. There are also several different types of Text Formats that you can use. I am going to choose Title Case which will capitalize the first letter of each word automatically (names should be capitalized). Let’s not worry about the macro stuff for now. You should always name your fields so put txtName for the bookmark. Figure 4 is how what mine looked like before I chose OK.
Your document will look like this with the default text showing in the field. The field being identified by the gray box. The gray box will stretch to fit 40 characters.
The signature we would want to just leave as it is so that when printed the person can sign it. Insert a text field for the date. This time use Current Date as the Type. The current date will automatically put in today’s date. Figure 6 shows the settings I used for the date.
Now the Medical section you will do a little different. Instead of having a text field put in a check box field. First I want to put my cursor between the two tab marks and than on the Check box Form Field.
I am going to check the size for the box to match my font size which is 12 pt. Remember this is a check box so a ü will mean checked and a blank will mean not checked. Since our form should be blank we want the default value to be not checked. I am going to name this field chkWalk. I also did the same thing for eye color and the rest of the boxes I wanted to check. Unfortunately my tab setting were not what I wanted any more so I went into Format, Tabs... and cleared them all. I used my mouse to reset the tabs so that they looked good. Figure 8 shows the current setting.
I am going to go ahead and finish modifying the document and Figure 9 is what it looks like now:
Wilderness
I understand that any adventure in the
outdoors comes with certain risks. I hereby acknowledge that fact and release
Wilderness
Your name (printed) Enter Your Name Here
Your name (signature) _____________________________________________________
Date
Medical
Section:
Ability to carry a heavy a load Enter Weight Weight
Allergic to Bee Stings Enter Height Height
Allergic to Penicillin Enter Allergies Other Allergies
Please list all medication you are
currently taking: Enter medications
Please list any injuries (new or old)
that may impair your ability to participate in heavy physical exertion: Enter Injuries here
Please list any impairments
that you may have: Enter Impairments
here
In case of an emergency who should we
contact?
Person Contact Relation
Enter here
Phone (000) 000 - 00000 Address Street Address
Figure 9
Before the document is protected we need to turn the protection feature on. Choose Tools, Protect Document. You need to specify that you want to protect the form, so be sure to choose the correct option button for the form before clicking on OK. Now the form is all set to be used. You can use the tab key to go from field to field. To keep the original always save your copy as a different name. That’s pretty slick, eh.
Linking/Copying
You can link or copy a spreadsheet range or chart very easily into a WORD document. The difference between linking and copying is that when you link the spreadsheet or chart, any changes you make to the original will also be made on the linked version. When you copy a spreadsheet or chart, any changes you make to the original will NOT be made on the copied version.
Linking
a Spreadsheet Range
To link a spreadsheet range or chart you would follow these simple steps.
1. Open both WORD and Excel.
2. Place the cursor in the WORD document where you want the spreadsheet range or chart to go. I suggest giving it a new paragraph.
3. Activate Excel. Highlight the Spreadsheet or Chart (if the chart is on a sheet by itself you only need to be looking at the chart).
4. Choose Edit, Copy. This will place a copy in the clipboard for you.
5. Activate WORD. You should have the cursor in the correct place.
6.
Choose Edit,
Paste Special, Paste Link and choose the correct
type of link if it is not already chosen. In the dialog box shown in
Figure 10, I pasted a link to a
Pretty easy to do. If you want to just have a copy follow the same steps only in Step 6 choose Edit, Paste.
Linking Two WORD documents
To link two word processing documents together you can follow the same simple steps as listed above for linking a spreadsheet to a word file. One reason why you may want to link a document is that you have a company header that you want everyone to use. You can have the company header on a common directory and everyone can than simply link the company header to their files. This way you can change the header in one place and it will change everyone’s document. The easiest way to link the file is to choose Insert, File to get Figure 11.
Use the check box Link to File to create a link between the two documents. In Figure 11 I have chosen the file Company Logo.
Form Letter
You can link a word
processing file with a database file as a form letter. You have most likely
received a form letter in the mail before. They are pretty easy to make. You
need two things, a database file with the fields that you want in your letter
and a word processing document with all the rest. For our example I am going to
use the MEMO.DOC from the word processing chapter and the Database file
WILDERNESS
You can add a new field to your data table by simply choosing table design. You then simply add a new field. Keep in mind that if you have 10,000 records that means you will need to enter the new information for that field 10,000 times! Since I did think about making the form letter when I created the database I did not think to put in the trip field. However it was worth my time to add the field as it makes my form letter better. Besides I only had 10 records and not 10,000!
I basically want to send a similar letter to everyone going on a trip with me. Every person needs to be at the headquarters the day before their trip begins no matter what trip they are on. So I can reword this memo as shown in Figure 12, to be a little bit more generic. The text that is underlines is what would be different for each person:
Wilderness
Hillary
Dear Hillary,
We are glad that you
will be joining us for the Long Trail hiking
trip. You should plan to be at our headquarters in
We will be heading
out to the trailhead at
I actually just got
back from a great 7 day excursion in the Lye Brook Wilderness area with one of
our guides, Shelby. We had a great time watching several moose in the meadows
area.
We are all looking
forward to seeing you when you arrive at our headquarters. Be sure to get those
hiking shoes broken in!
Happy Trails,
Your name
Wilderness
Figure 12
We could make this into a FORM and type in the information as we need to. However it would be easier just to create FORM LETTER and use a mail merge instead. What we want to do is replace the red text with a field place holder representing the field in the database where we can get that information from. Before you begin it is best to be sure that you have all the fields in your database that you want to use in the form letter. Again I had to go back and add a field that I had forgotten (trip).
Okay let’s create a Form letter. We do this
from the word processor. Simply delete Hillary and leave the cursor on that
paragraph. Choose Tools, Mail Merge... to get the dialog
box in Figure 13 that lists the 3 steps you need to take.
You need to choose Create..., Form Letter, Active Window as your first step. This identifies the document that you have open as your form letter file. You will notice that you can create several different types of files. If they are something you are interested in be sure to choose help and read what you can do.
Step 2 is where we identify the file that
our information is going to come from. When you choose Get Data, Open
Data Source you
will get a normal Open dialog box. Unfortunately you will not see your database
file anywhere no matter how hard you look. Since we are in Word it is trying to
open all the Word file types (*.doc). You need to change the file type to
Microsoft Access file type (*.mdb). Find the database
file and choose OK. You should now be looking at Figure 14.
You can choose a Table or a Query for the data source for your form letters. A query is probably the best way to go if you are doing a large list (I recommend not using a parameter query). This would enable you to pull out the current customers and sort the query by zip code and than by last name, first name. This will make it easier to divide the letters up to be put in the correct bundle for the post office. In our sample case it does not really matter so I just chose the table. At which point I received this cute little message in Figure 15.
Well of course there are no fields because I haven’t done that yet. So let’s just choose Edit Main Document. You now need to add the fields to our document where we want them to go. Since your cursor is in the place where we had Hillary’s name, let’s put in a field for first name and last name. Notice the Insert Merge Field button on the toolbar that has appeared in Figure 16. When you click on this button you will get a list of the fields that you can use from your database. Simply choose First Name. This will put in a place holder for that field.
Hit the space bar once to get a blank space after first name and do the same thing only for Last Name this time. Your document will look like Figure 17.
You just need to keep doing this for the rest of the address. Don’t forget that if you want a comma between city and state, you will have to type in the comma between the field place holders. The last field that I want to insert is to replace trip with the field place holder that will put in the name of the trip that person has signed up for. When you are done your file will look like Figure 18.
Groovy go ahead and choose print preview. Hmm. It seems print preview shows the place holders. Guess what, if you print the document the placeholders will print. Remember there were 3 steps. We just finished step 2. There are a couple of ways to do step 3. The easiest way is to simply click on the View Merged Data button on the toolbar as shown in Figure 19. Or you could go back into Tools, Mail Merge.
Your document will now have the data in place of the field placeholders as in Figure 20. Pretty neat stuff.
