Creating a letter... Word export or report?

[gangel]

Hey pplz,.



So i have made my program and now i need to make it automate a letter writing system.

Pretty much i need to send data from access to word and then use word to open the letter and then work on it before finishing and printing.

OR is it smarter to show the fields as text in a form and then it creates a letter which is actually a reoprt inside access?

[cyanidem]

I would lean toward second option. One application less to mess with and more control over the letter appearance.

[NTC]

set up a Word merge from Word - you follow that wizard and it will prompt you to locate the data source which can be an Access query.

[gangel]

Thanks guys, sorry LONG time no response, i had a bunch of errors on the program i dedicated time to.

Ive come back to this now after researching NTC's idea of the mail merge.

This works great with one exception... I need to list items UNPAID within the letter... kindof like a sub report idea.

eg,
hi john (firstname mail merge data),

Please pay:
1. Apples 23.99
2. Bananas 13.95

etc etc

So each customer has a different sublist of payments to make.

Ideas??

Can there be like a double mail merge or something?

Or mail merge then import back as a report and add a sub report!Q?

Sorry im probably nowhere near the best answer lol

Thanks in advance for reading everyone

[NTC]

As now described; I would abandon the Word merge approach and re-consider using an Access report. A report, with a sub report for the due list, will work fine except and is very common. A report can easily be printed or exported as PDF or Word with just a right click.

However in regard to your initial post "use word to open the letter and then work on it before finishing". If you mean that you need to customize/tweak each individual letter - perhaps with some personal note - that idea does not fit well with the fixed Access report approach. One way might be to have a single flexible field that you can set up in a form which includes this note in the main form's record data - and that will therefore flow appropriately into the main report looking like a stand alone sentence. A little creative trickery in the report design may suffice.