Fill-In Forms and Access (anybody familiar with 8D process?)

L

Lambi000

I have an Access database that has a corresponding fill-in form for outside
vendors to fill in. I would like to be able to have them fill in the form
and then get the data from the form to put straight into the corresponding
fields in my database. My boss tried to get this to happen on our website,
but the powers that be nixed it.

So I'm stuck with having to email the form to my vendors in Word and then
cutting and pasting the data when it comes back via email. Because we get so
many of these forms back every day, I am hoping there is a better way. I
have been told that because most of our vendors don't have Access I'm stuck
using Word. Help!
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

Consider using Excel. Most people who have Word have Excel, and Access can
easily link to or import Excel spreadsheets.

A more fashionable approach would be to use XML, but that would assume that
all your suppliers have recent versions of Office.
 
L

Lambi000

I was hoping not to have to do Excel. How recent would their versions have
to be for me to use XML?
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

The later, the better. Office 2003 has better support for XML than Office
XP, which had better support than Office 2000. I suspect you'd probably need
to specify Office XP as the minimum version, but don't take my word for
that - it's a long time now since I used Office 2000, and I wasn't doing
anything with XML back then.

If you want to see what an XML solution might look like, take a look at the
MSDN example at the URL below. But why the reluctance to use Excel? It would
be a quick and simple solution that could easily be made to work with
versions of Office as far back as Office 97.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/un...brary/en-us/dnofftalk/html/office04032003.asp
 
L

Lambi000

I don't want to use Excel because, previously, we had to use some sort of a
template to format the data correctly. I was hoping somebody out there in
the world of Engineering/Quality Assurance would know about 8D forms and have
something set up. But I'm going to take a look at XML and see if I can do
it.
 
B

Brendan Reynolds

Well, it's up to you, of course, but to me the XML route looks like a lot
more work than setting up an Excel template.
 
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