Hello all, noob here,
I have a more general question, unless you guys have more specific answers for me.
Scenario: My company has to compose letters to accompany map products that have to be sent to every community involved in a particular study. This is repeated for every study (usually county-wide), and the task is very redundant. Currently it is done manually and well, I know there is a better way.
Before the letter composition begins, one member of the team researches information regarding each community. They capture information such as Primary Contact's Name, Address, etc. Along with that is information internal to our company that is needed in the letter. All of this information input into an MDB.
There is a deduction matrix used to determine the content of the letter, based on specifics (attributes in the table) of the project for that locale. There are 7 different letter options (templates).
What I would like to do is have Access and Word communicate to automate this letter generation. I've tested Word's MailMerge functionality and was able to see how this can be done. But I'm looking for further automation.
What I would like to happen is this:
- Have Word access the MDB and look for the letter number for each record (field = LETTER_NUM), and launch that template.
- Populate the template with the information where it is needed. Using MailMerge or another method that will work the same way.
- Save the document with a specified naming convention. This can even point to a field in the DB if need be.
Ideally, this would be automated for every record in the DB. Essentially, running as a batch.
I'm fairly certain this is possible. However, It's a bit beyond my knowledge of the Office Suite. I'm looking for any help I can get in order to get me started. I guess I need to know what programming languages should I investigate to complete this task? Or if there is anything already in place that will accomplish what I'm trying to do here, that would also be great! If you feel like helping me figure it out, that is also appreciated! :-)
Currently this is done manually. The database exist from the initial data capture, but every letter is composed and information replaced by hand (copy/paste/save). This takes a person 1-2 days depending on the study area. A waste of time if you ask me.
Thanks for all of your help. Oh.... And I'm using the Office 2007 Suite if that makes a difference. Sorry the post is so long, I wanted to make sure to be thorough in my inquiry.
Sincerely,
jmwheatley