I have an interesting problem. I work in the pharmaceutical/engineering industry and we often need to develop tests for processes... These tests are very time consuming to make, and much of the time is spent wrestling with word documents. The fields in the tables used are generally a description of the test to be carried out, then the expected result, a place to write, a yes/no set of checkboxes, and a place to initial and date. ((Please see attached image))
I'd much rather make this material in excel, or access, and import complete tables into Excel. The screenshot is from a 200+ page document.
I was thinking of using the section numbering as a xml tag, and using that tag to populate tables, or better yet, a table that expanded and shrank to the right size.
How easy is this to pull off? I think that the toughest part is probably building the XML schemas required.
At that point can I use VB scripting to automatically expand the table to the right size? Will tables like that wrap correctly? Can I build the wrap options into the word template that I'm planning on using?
If I can figure this out, I'll save hundreds of hours over the next year! Is this possible? Is there a better approach? It's important that the documentation can be updated automatically when I change the original xlsx or db file.
Any ideas on xml files I could use to accomplish this, or relevant examples?
Thanks!!
Bruce Schaller
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