Advice on forms

[Pehr Jansson]

I am looking for some basic design advice before I start out on a pretty
significant project involving designing forms. Here is the situation that I
have: I have about 80 active files. Each files have recurring matters. And
each matter will have a few documents needed. Each document will have some
common information, e.g., file number, file title, client name, orignal
filing date. Each matter will have some information unique to it, e.g., the
date of submitting that matter, the nature of the matter, the mail tracking
number for it. And each document for a matter might have some of its own
unique information.

I want to have a master form document for each of the documents that recurr.
Usually, these will pull information from both the file level, the matter
level and the document level. Some of the information may not always be
used, for example, information linking one file to another.

Any thoughts on how to organize my forms and my data? Should I have one
database for all my files, or a datafile for each file. Do I have a separate
database for the matter level? And so on. If you are inclined to give me
advice on this, feel free to ask me questions that would clarify the problem.

 

[Charles Kenyon]

Consider using mailmerge with fill-in fields to gather information unique to
a particular form. I would include fields for all information that will be
used in more than one form.
Unless you have a huge number of records I would recommend a single
database. I use an Excel spreadsheet because it allows far more fields. When
you are merging you can select only one record quite easily using the
selection tool (binoculars) on the merge toolbar.

I use gender-specific terms in my documents keyed to a gender field. That
way I have one field instead of multiple fields for these terms. Download
the gender toolbar template from http://addbalance.com/word/download.htm for
an idea of how this works. (That uses document properties for the gender
variable but a merge variable works the same way.)