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Merging Portions of Word Documents

Currently I recieve status reports in MS Word format from multiple techs which I then manually combine into one status report (by copying and pasting) which I send to my supervisor. I would like to automate the process of combining these status reports. It's a pain.

Attached is an example of the form I would use to combine all of the individual tech status report. For the example I've put 2 items for each tech in each category but the number of items could be more or less than 2. Of course in each of the tech's status report only their name would be on the form (not the other techs).

What would be be best way of combining these status reports and can someone help show me how? I don't want to pay any licensing fees. Am open to all suggestions. Maybe a vb.net or vbs solution? STATUS-REPORT-TEMPLATE-EE.DOC

MINDSUPERB

You may try to design your form in Excel or even better by Access. These two applications are appropriate if you collect data and combine them for reporting.

If you choose Excel, you can design a Sumary spreadsheet by which its data are linked from the spreasheet of each Technician. And with Access, you can distribute a Front End to each technician and whatever data they entered could be easily summarized.

I agree that these approaches could not be easily done but once completed and implemented, it will save you time and hassle.

Sincerely,
Ed

sjklein42

This is some VB I use to build a document automatically.

You start with a DOC file containing your header boilerplate (headerDocument.doc).

The VB code then opens other files, copies and pastes them into the main document.

At the end, it saves it as a new document called finalReport.doc.

If you know VB you can get the idea pretty easily, I think.

Private Function PasteNow()
    Selection.WholeStory
    Selection.Copy
    Windows(1).Activate
    Selection.Paste
End Function

Private Function PasteInto(whichWindow)
    Windows(whichWindow).Activate
    Selection.WholeStory
    Selection.Copy
    Windows(1).Activate
    Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
    Selection.Paste
End Function

Private Function InsertSectionBreak()
    Selection.EndKey Unit:=wdStory
    Selection.InsertBreak Type:=wdSectionBreakNextPage
End Function

Private Function PasteFile(whichFile)
    InsertSectionBreak
    
    Documents.Open FileName:=whichFile, ConfirmConversions:=False, _
        ReadOnly:=True, AddToRecentFiles:=False, PasswordDocument:="", _
        PasswordTemplate:="", Revert:=False, WritePasswordDocument:="", _
        WritePasswordTemplate:="", Format:=wdOpenFormatAuto
    PasteNow
End Function

Sub PasteFilesTogether()
    Documents.Open FileName:="c:\myworkdir\headerDocument.doc", ConfirmConversions:=False, ReadOnly _
        :=True, AddToRecentFiles:=False, PasswordDocument:="", PasswordTemplate _
        :="", Revert:=False, WritePasswordDocument:="", WritePasswordTemplate:="" _
        , Format:=wdOpenFormatAuto

    PasteFile("c:\myworkdir\inputFile_1.doc")
    PasteFile("c:\myworkdir\inputFile_2.doc")
    PasteFile("c:\myworkdir\inputFile_3.doc")
    PasteFile("c:\myworkdir\inputFile_4.doc")
    
    ActiveDocument.SaveAs FileName:="c:\myworkdir\finalReport.doc", FileFormat:= _
        wdFormatDocument, LockComments:=False, Password:="", AddToRecentFiles:= _
        False, WritePassword:="", ReadOnlyRecommended:=False, EmbedTrueTypeFonts:= _
        False, SaveNativePictureFormat:=False, SaveFormsData:=False, _
        SaveAsAOCELetter:=False

End Sub

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aikimark

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