First Time Access Question

[Thatoneguy]

Greetings all!



I am that typical guy who comes up with good ideas and am then told to go make it happen, usually putting me in way over my head with achieving said results. My latest idea at work has my boss excited and steering me towards using Microsoft Access to solve the issue. My problem is that I have never used Microsoft Access a day in my life. I will put this disclaimer up front: I am not looking for someone to do the work for me. (Not saying I won't accept assistance and that you'd have my eternal gratitude). What I am really looking for is guidance and where to channel my energy so I can achieve my desired end state/final product and you receive my immediate gratitude. Having said all that, I will post my desired product and conditions limiting it and pray that it is in fact achievable for someone with my lack of Access knowledge and won't consume my soul working on.

Summary: The ability to input data into Microsoft Excel and have that data auto-populate onto a PDF (or Word as I just found a Word format of the document being used) and is able to pull information from multiple documents using a shared source such as sharepoint (which our work has) or something similar to Google drive.

I work at an institution that instructs people and part of the instruction is a peer assessment. I'd like that peer assessment to be done on a computer and have it saved to sharepoint (for example) and then have that information automatically update to the PDF in data fields (Example being you are rated on average of being 3 out of 5 in this category). There would also be an instructor document that would generate information such as ' you scored X out of X on this event' and hopefully generate the personal data based off of a roster number. I.E. Roster number 100 = Name, class, pulls data from peer assessments, and instructor grades.

I envision this taking three documents; the instructor document for the group grades, the peer assessment document, and the PDF (or word) document that has 90%. These two documents are then able to 'generate' the third document of roster 100 in PDF (or word) format with a click of the button. Is this feasible and will I try to commit suicide trying to learn how to do any of this?

Guidance would be much appreciated in any form (what to do, tutorials, etc.)

Respectfully,

That one guy

P.S. These are the two base documents:

4856.doc
A4856.PDF

[June7]

Your vision encompasses some sophisticated application collaboration. I am sure all could be done but this is advanced VBA programming. All you describe has been discussed in numerous threads. Writing code to pull it all together would be challenging for an experienced programmer.

I understand the desire for delivering data via SharePoint (I've never used but know it has its own limitations and challenges) but why write data to PDF form? Why not just an Access report?

[Thatoneguy]

The primary reason for PDF is because the file itself needs to at least have the format of the PDF I attached. I am not sure if you could make that a background/watermark in the Access report. If so, then would that be an easier solution?

[June7]

A jpg or png or bmp could be background - I have done this but only because some text formatting was not possible in Access. Should be simple to build report to replicate the pdf form, especially since it is only 2 pages. It's the digital signing that might preclude using Access report.

PDF document can be viewed within Access by using InternetBrowser control. I don't know if the digital signing could be done.

[Thatoneguy]

Don't worry about the digital signature. That is good old fashioned hand signatures

[June7]

But doesn't the signature show as a graphic on the PDF form? If you want to print this graphic signature on Access report, that means linking to an image file of the signature.