How can I automate Word document conversion to new template forma.

[Belle]

I want to automate the conversion of several Word 2000, 2002, and 2003 files
to my company's new branding style using a template. I created a template in
Word 2003 using macros to automate some of the conversion (changing from one
font type, size, and color to another. I'm trying to use VBA code to tweak
this process but am not sure how best to go about it. Is there any existing
code for this process? I did not see any available code that would perform
document automation listed under Microsoft's code links.

 

[Jezebel]

Not sure what you want to automate here. Are you doing anything more than
applying new style definitions?

 

[Belle]

Sorry, I tried to start slow and go from there...unfortunately, most of our
end user documents come from in-house users who don't have a clue about
styles. I spent the last year training my employees on how to create, use,
and troubleshoot sytles. Senior management doesn't have a clue about
documentation and how long it might actually take to convert documents (some
are 500-1000 pages) to the new branding guidelines. As Supervisor of 1 of 3
Corporate Development groups (Desktop Publishing/Documentation), it is my
responsibility to accomplish the conversion task (working with the Marketing
and Graphics) from old school Engineering documents (mostly no styles but
some do actually have styles applied though they may not have been applied
correctly) to state-of-the-art branded documents that follow specific
specifications for each Corporate group--Word Processing has specific fonts,
colors, logos, and other guidelines to follow--and complete this task by
mid-March. Therefore, I was looking to automate as much as possible. We
have used macros before to automate our engineering contracts that require
information that is repeated in these contracts to go through an automated
macro process so this entry saves repeated entries of the same information.
But to take a document, in whatever format it may be in and covert it to a
styled template, will probably take some time to think the process through as
to how best to automate as much of the process a possible.

 

[Doug Robbins]

And really only someone who has access to the documents will be able to
determine what is and what is not possible. When you work out specifically
what it is that you need to do, then by all means post back here if you need
help with bits of it. You cannot however really expect anybody who only has
the information that is available from your posts to date to be able to come
up with anything significant to help you.

--
Please respond to the Newsgroup for the benefit of others who may be
interested. Questions sent directly to me will only be answered on a paid
consulting basis.

Hope this helps,
Doug Robbins - Word MVP

 

[Belle]

That is the task at hand starting tomorrow. It is hard to know enough to be
dangerous but not solve the problem! Until tomorrow...

 

[Jezebel]

From my own experience with exactly this task, I suggest, in all
seriousness, that you just not do it. The effort required is prodigious, and
the return is usually invisible to the naked eye. Just fix the header, add
the new logo and leave it at that.

 

[Chuck]

Hi Belle

We've just been through a similar process. Because of the volume of
documents involved (hundreds of thousands) we decided to rebrand documents on
an as-needed basis, providing one click buttons via add-ins so users
themselves can automatically rebrand documents to conform to new margins,
fonts, styles etc. Users rebrand documents as they come up; any old
documents that do not come up for amendment/cloning/etc are left in their
original state.

Numbering list templates were a major headache, which I've resolved by
providing subs that redefine all numbering styles and list templates,
including names for list templates.

Certain subsets of documents (eg boilerplate/precedent documents) needed to
be rebranded in batches, so I created macros that churn through directory
structures using Application.Filesearch to automatically rebrand all
documents in each directory. We didn't do this for all documents because
there's too much variation with margins/customised styles etc in
non-boilerplate documents.

It took months of work to fine tune the rebranding add-ins to handle all
foreseeable circumstances, and even then there's a certain amount of manual
rebranding that has to take place to clean up any problems that the
rebranding reveals. We had the luxury of 9 months of forewarning on the
rebrand go-live date forthat development process.

From what you say it sounds like your documents may suffer from widely
varying degrees of style compliance. You might consider a "quick and dirty"
rebrand for existing documents that (as Jezebel suggests) fixes
headers/footers, inserts logos and simply applies the rebrand font over
whatever content is there already.

Going forward your new styles should make new documents rebrand compliant
from the get go...

HTH and good luck
Chuck