Advice on Word Documents

[crimmelcp]

Client has 15 letters written in MS word.

To get these to print the best, should I
Copy each into letters
copy each into reports
use word merge.

I have never used word merge, I have always re-written letters in Alpha.

Most letters are 1 page.

Which would be best.

Thanks
Charlie Crimmel

[Garry Flanigan]

Re: Advice on Word Documents

An advantage of Word merge is that it is then easy for users to personalize the letter. Word merges are very straight forward if the merge data is in one table but much more complicated if you need to merge from a set.
I certainly prefer reports and so without any further information would go down that track.

[csda1]

Re: Advice on Word Documents

Hi Charlie,

Client has 15 letters written in MS word.

To get these to print the best, should I
Copy each into letters
copy each into reports
use word merge.

I have never used word merge, I have always re-written letters in Alpha.

Most letters are 1 page.

Which would be best.

If you can do them in Alpha with the formatting you need, it will be faster than opening up MS word, and running them. It will also be easier to add data fields. You can also use an rtf save of the document to insert into the letter, and then modify with the data fields.

You could also access the MS word by active X, but it would be a bit harder, but I believe some samples have been posted in the past.

Depending upon formatting and final output, choose either report or letter layout as needed.

For me, the merge would be my last choice.

[Tom Henkel]

Re: Advice on Word Documents

Charlie,

We hve a lot of letters here. We have used word merge, letter and report formats.
For a form letter that goes to thousands of customers once a month, we have been using word merge. It is a bit cumbersome, but we do, then have a complete copy of everything we sent in a file for later reference.

For internal Alpha letters, you can build a larger rich text area, then copy and paste the word document into it. After that, it is just a matter of placing your fields into the proper locations. We found that to be the simplest, and most word-like. If you place a data field into the middle of the rich text, the text spaces appropriately and looks very clean. Depending on the complexity of the letter, use either letter or report format. We use report format for letters that may be coming from a set where we would have data elements from multiple child records to be printed in a detail section, wrapped by a group with the text of the letter.

Tom

Tom