drop down box with options stored in Excel file

[Guest]

I am a small firm attorney with a dilemma. How can I create a drop down box
in which the options are not stored within the typical form properties
window, but instead are found in an Excel file?

I am setting up dozens of templates with drop down boxes for variable text
such as county names, the name of the attorney submitting the document, etc.
We practice in many counties, and the typical word field is too limited in
the number of entries in a drop down box. The second issue is that when we
hire a new attorney, I don't want to have to edit fields in dozens of
templates, but would prefer to make one addition to the excel data source.

Any thoughts??

 

[Suzanne S. Barnhill]

Aside from the idea of storing the entries in an Excel file, it seems like
an AutoTextList field might do what you want. See
http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/TblsFldsFms/AutoTextList.htm

--
Suzanne S. Barnhill
Microsoft MVP (Word)
Words into Type
Fairhope, Alabama USA

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all may benefit.

 

[Guest]

I had considered that article, actually. In this case, I need to have these
drop-down boxes available as forms in an otherwise locked document. So I
guess the question really is whether forms in numerous documents can link to
a single source of variable data, such as an excel file, but still be
available in a drop down box format (as opposed to a mail merge, table, etc.)?

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP]

I would suggest that you should be using userforms rather than formfields in
a protected document

See the article "How to create a Userform" at:

http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/Userforms/CreateAUserForm.htm


This routine loads a listbox (or combobox) with client details stored in a
table in a separate
document (which makes it easy to maintain with additions, deletions etc.),
that document being saved as Clients.Doc for the following code.

On the UserForm, have a list box (ListBox1) and a Command Button
(CommandButton1) and use the following code in the UserForm_Initialize() and
the CommandButton1_Click() routines

Private Sub UserForm_Initialize()
Dim sourcedoc As Document, i As Integer, j As Integer, myitem As Range,
m As Long, n As Long
' Modify the path in the following line so that it matches where you
saved Clients.doc
Application.ScreenUpdating = False
' Open the file containing the client details
Set sourcedoc = Documents.Open(FileName:="e:\worddocs\Clients.doc")
' Get the number or clients = number of rows in the table of client
details less one
i = sourcedoc.Tables(1).Rows.Count - 1
' Get the number of columns in the table of client details
j = sourcedoc.Tables(1).Columns.Count
' Set the number of columns in the Listbox to match
' the number of columns in the table of client details
ListBox1.ColumnCount = j
' Define an array to be loaded with the client data
Dim MyArray() As Variant
'Load client data into MyArray
ReDim MyArray(i, j)
For n = 0 To j - 1
For m = 0 To i - 1
Set myitem = sourcedoc.Tables(1).Cell(m + 2, n + 1).Range
myitem.End = myitem.End - 1
MyArray(m, n) = myitem.Text
Next m
Next n
' Load data into ListBox1
ListBox1.List() = MyArray
' Close the file containing the client details
sourcedoc.Close SaveChanges:=wdDoNotSaveChanges
End Sub

Private Sub CommandButton1_Click()
Dim i As Integer, Addressee As String
Addressee = ""
For i = 1 To ListBox1.ColumnCount
ListBox1.BoundColumn = i
Addressee = Addressee & ListBox1.Value & vbCr
Next i
ActiveDocument.Bookmarks("Addressee").Range.InsertAfter Addressee
UserForm2.Hide
End Sub

The Initialize statement will populate the listbox with the data from the
table and then when a client is selected in from the list and the command
button is clicked, the information for that client will be inserted into a
bookmark in the document. You may want to vary the manner in which it is
inserted to suit our exact requirements, but hopefully this will get you
started.



--
Hope this helps.

Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my
services on a paid consulting basis.

Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Jay Freedman]

In addition, code to load a listbox in a userform from data in an
Excel worksheet can be found at
http://www.word.mvps.org/FAQs/InterDev/FillListBoxFromXLDAO.htm.

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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