How to force users to fill out Document Properties in a document?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

The company that I work for spends alot of time searching for old documents
on various servers. Is there a way to force users to fill out the Document
Properties page? I know that there is an option to have the Document
Properties page appear while saving a document, but it does not force the
user to fill in the fields.
 
User education is the best plan - but I suppose you could intercept the
print command and force the users to enter the data - but it would be tricky
to implement and would be fairly simple to work around. Something along the
lines of the following saved in a global template should work. The example
prompts for the document title and places it in the appropriate document
property variable.

If macros of these names appear in the users' normal.dot files then those in
the add-in will be replaced by the ones in normal.dot. It is not a good plan
to mess with users' normal.dot files.

This macro disables the option to use the built-in properties dialog.

Sub FileSave()
Dim myTitle As String
Dim saveProp As Boolean
saveProp = Options.SavePropertiesPrompt
Options.SavePropertiesPrompt = False
start:
myTitle = InputBox("Enter document title")
If myTitle = "" Then GoTo UnFilled:
ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyTitle) = myTitle
ActiveDocument.Save
Options.SavePropertiesPrompt = saveProp
Exit Sub
UnFilled:
MsgBox ("The dialog must be completed")
GoTo start:
End Sub

Sub FileSaveAs()
Dim myTitle As String
Dim saveProp As Boolean
saveProp = Options.SavePropertiesPrompt
Options.SavePropertiesPrompt = False
start:
myTitle = InputBox("Enter document title")
If myTitle = "" Then GoTo UnFilled:
ActiveDocument.BuiltInDocumentProperties(wdPropertyTitle) = myTitle
Dialogs(wdDialogFileSaveAs).Show
Options.SavePropertiesPrompt = saveProp
Exit Sub
UnFilled:
MsgBox ("The dialog must be completed")
GoTo start:
End Sub

http://www.gmayor.com/installing_macro.htm

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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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Thank you Graham Mayor for your response.
The President of the company that I work for wants the users to not only
fill out name fields but also place keywords to use for searching.
He has asked me to implement Indexing Services on the server that they
mainly use for File Sharing. I have talked to a few Techs about Indexing
Services and they have warned of the enormous resource usage on the server.
Most, if not all of the documents already on the server do not have the
Document Properties pages filled out, so the database that it would create
would not serve much purpose unless they go back and go through each
document.
Another problem is that half of the workstations have 256mb of memory, some
have more, but I have suggested adding additional memory to the workstations
to speed up the search process... he (the president) doesn't think that the
workstation's resources have anything to do with the amount of time it takes
to search for documents on a server.
I have suggested that he demand the users to fill in the appropriate fields,
to set the SAVE event to bring up the Document Properties page.
What are your thoughts?
 
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