Dynamic document creation from form picks?

[hkrause]

I'm not a power Office user and am not familiar with programming or
customization, so please speak slowly when responding...

We frequenly create documents, which are collections of document portions
that vary according to product type, options, etc. For example, there will
be a common introduction and warranty, then installation instructions based
on product and several other sections that might or might not be included
based on product options. Currently, someone marks up a form indicating
which sections should be included and sends that to another person, who
manually pulls together all the document portions, customizes some of the
text based on the job, and puts it together into a document package. Most of
the included documents are Word files or PDFs.

I'm looking for a way to help automate part or all of this procedure. Folks
would *like* to be able to fill in an electronic form (rather than doing it
by hand), and have the relevant document portions be assembled
auto-magically, with a few text portions filled in based on form text field
input. Other methods of automation would also be considered... I just don't
know what's out there.

I'd be happy to know of some off-the-shelf product that would accomplish
this. If nothing quite fits the bill, is this something that could be
programmed? If so, what do I need to be looking at? For reference, they're
currently using Office 97, although I'm sure they would upgrade to something
more current if needed to make use of features that would help accomplish
this.

Thanks for any input.

 

[Doug Robbins - Word MVP on news.microsoft.com]

See the Boiler.zip item on fellow MVP Graham Mayor's website at:

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

--
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, originally posted via msnews.microsoft.com