automatically updating an autotext entry

[Glennard Lud]

To whoever can help, please,

I need to update a letterhead at some point in the near
future that appears in 300 or so letters. the letterhead
is a shaded text box in the header containing some text,
it is positioned on the side of the letters. at some point
I'm going to want to stick some graphics inside the
letterhead text box and I don't want to go through all the
letters updating the letterhead on each one.

If the letters were web pages it would be easy enough to
have the leterhead as a seperate frame, but I need to have
them as .doc files. I tried creating a field code autotext
entry and having the autotext entry as the letterhead but
I couldn't seem to get the template I'm basing the letters
on to update after I'd changed the autotext entry. Is
there a way to get this to automatically update? Also
should I just be treating the Letterhead as a seperate
file (.bmp or .doc, I don't know) to import in some way?

Any help gratefully received.

Glenn.

 

[Cindy Meister -WordMVP-]

Hi Glennard,

at some point
I'm going to want to stick some graphics inside the
letterhead text box and I don't want to go through all the
letters updating the letterhead on each one.

I'm afraid you won't have any choice but to do this, either
manually or using VBA. There's no way to "automatically
update" something that's already in a document, just by
making a change in the template. Word doesn't work that way
(except for styles (limited), macros and toolbars).

If this is something you see happening again, and again, and
again, then I'd look at creating the letterhead information
in a separate file and using Insert/File with link to display
it in all documents. Then, all you'd need to do is change the
file being linked in.

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jan
24 2003)
http://www.mvps.org/word

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[Charles Kenyon]

You can do this with either AutoText or IncludeText. Are you sure that you
want historical documents (your file copies of sent documents) to change?

I use a macro in my letterhead templates that gets the letterhead components
from another document (where they are bookmarked) and inserts them into a
new document based on the template. The new document is then saved for a
historical record. If the components are changed future letters based on the
same template will use the new components. See the letterhead system at
<URL: http://addbalance.com/word/download.htm>.


--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory:
<URL: http://www.addbalance.com/word/index.htm>

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide)
<URL: http://www.addbalance.com/usersguide/index.htm>

Word Resources Page
<URL: http://www.addbalance.com/word/wordwebresources.htm>

See also the MVP FAQ: <URL: http://www.mvps.org/word/> which is awesome!
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