Use Word template from Outlook

[Guest]

I followed the Word MVP's very informative articles on creating all of my
standard Word document templates including letterhead, fields, formatting,
and numbering.

If I populate my templates with contact information from Outlook by using
the mail merge feature, it works but requires more time, mouse clicks, and
keystrokes than entering the data manually.

I don't know of any other way to do this.

I would like to use something simple like the "new letter to contact"
feature in Outlook. But when I invoke this command and select my Word
template from the drop-down menu, the resulting document does not resemble my
template and is therefore unusable.

Any simple suggestion would be appreciated.

 

[Graham Mayor]

See the section on inserting Outlook data at
http://www.gmayor.com/Macrobutton.htm

--
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Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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[Guest]

Thank you for your response.

If I understand your article, the macrobutton field is meant to replace the
name and address fields in all of my templates?

Once that is done, the only way to use the macrobutton field is to start a
new document in word based upon the template & double click the macrobutton
field and search through my outlook contacts to select the right one?

What about a contacts spouses name? Is this a separate macrobutton field to
be navigated again?

And if my contacts name and spouse name appear elsewhere in the document
additional macrobuttons must be navigated again?

Please confirm if my understanding is correct.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

And if my contacts name and spouse name appear elsewhere in the document

additional macrobuttons must be navigated again?

--
From the FAQ

19. How can I enter something once in a document and have it repeat
elsewhere?
http://gregmaxey.mvps.org/Repeating_Data.htm

--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide


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This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Guest]

Thank you, I know about the ref field.

Would this require a 2 step process where I populate the first field using
the macrobutton and then invoke the command to activate the ref field?

 

[Charles Kenyon]

The Ref field requires updating after the source information has changed.
This can often be done with Ctrl-A, F9.

You may also want to look at the StyleRef field. You can apply a unique
character style (with no different formatting) to a particular data item and
use a StyleRef field to pick up that information elsewhere. The StyleRef
field seems to update immediately without any user intervention. (It would
be so nice if Ref fields did this as well!)
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Guest]

Thank you.

But my real question is, is it possible to create a word template, which
when selected and launched from outlooks "New letter to Contact", "Choose a
Page Design" drop down list, automatically populates all fields and prompts
me to fill-in the "fill-in" fields?

I've created the templates in word, but they only work with the unwieldly
mail merge.

Please advise.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Sorry. You asked a bunch of questions; I answered the only one where I
thought my answer might help. I thought you wanted an answer to that as
well. I guess it was just your way of complaining to the wind.
--
Charles Kenyon

Word New User FAQ & Web Directory: http://addbalance.com/word

Intermediate User's Guide to Microsoft Word (supplemented version of
Microsoft's Legal Users' Guide) http://addbalance.com/usersguide




--------- --------- --------- --------- --------- ---------
This message is posted to a newsgroup. Please post replies
and questions to the newsgroup so that others can learn
from my ignorance and your wisdom.

 

[Guest]

Good imagery. But I don't think that's it. I appreciate your response, if
that is all that I needed to do, then I'd be done. Thank you. But after
understanding the implications of adding yet another step to the process of
writing a standardized document, I don't want to keep going in that
direction. After finding myself going down the wrong path metaphorically, I
frequently go back to the beginning to see if I missed a better solution.

All I want to do is what Act did way back in 1997, and that is to simply
click 1 button and let the computer do all of the mundane things that it
already knows (i.e. template, name address, date, auto prompts), and for me
to simply do the things that are worthy of a cogent being (usually anyway),
i.e. compose my document.

Right or wrong, I am having a difficult time believing that outlook and word
can't do that 9 years later...which is why I keep trying! I guess I'd be
better off if someone just said that it can't be done.

 

[Graham Mayor]

The macrobutton method provides a simpler method, with fewer keystrokes,
than mail merge to grab data from Outlook. However it has limitations. One
of those limitations is that it can only access a limited field set, listed
in the appendix at the bottom of the web page. If you want all the available
fields then merging is the only way. See
http://www.gmayor.com/mailmerge_from_outlook.htm and
http://www.gmayor.com/mail_merge_labels_with_word_xp.htm (which will help
you make merge work more like it did in Word 97/2000.)

--
<>>< ><<> ><<> <>>< ><<> <>>< <>><<>
Graham Mayor - Word MVP

My web site www.gmayor.com

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