Overview- introduction- problem

J

Jeffrey Brown

Greetings,

Over the past few months, I've been learning the ins and
outs of VBA 6.0 to assist courtroom clerks in the
performance of their duties. One of the big challenges I
was assigned was to get rid of the programmable
typewriters they have used to type their minutes.

My first attempt at VBA coding was clumsy, clunky, and
memory intensive, but it does work. It is a sequenced
series of "Find and Replace" court phraseology codes
(legal babble), which allows the clerks to enter a string
of numbers delimited by a ` symbol and then have them
transformed and formatted via a macro keystroke.

The whole thing works by cycling through 9 modules of code
in a specified format, then a 10th module provides all the
necessary formatting instructions. I created a custom
toolbar and everything. It has some drawbacks and bugs to
work out, but overall it is a useable program for
generating court minutes.

My biggest concern has been that accomidating over 100
codes using a find and replace scheme is not only code
intensive, but also memory intensive as well. I have been
searching for another way to lighten the load a bit. One
of the possibilities I have been exploring is Mailmerge. I
experimentally set up a merge using the the codes, but I
was stopped dead in the water by the 63 item limit.

I am aware that Excel can be used as a database, and also
textfiles with a .dat extension and comma delimiters. What
I would like to do is create a situation as follows:

1. The clerks enter numeric codes and whatever else is
needed to complete the minutes.
2. A macro similar to find and replace changes the numeric
codes with the appropriate mail merge fields.
3. The document is merged.
4. The merged items are formatted correctly.
5. The resulting document is stored in a specific location
by a unique number previously entered in a fill-in field
in the header (these fields are delinked upon save so they
won't change).
6. The merge document is killed upon close.

It isn't exactly what any of this was created to do, but I
already have much of this in place, all I need to do is
connect a few dots:

1. Is this scheme doable? Is it worth the effort to try?

2. The merge data isn't strictly database info, instead
it is blocks of text or short phrases having to do
with court proceedings. Can I use multiple data
sources to get around the 63 item limit? (I cannot
use Access because not everyone has it on their PC, or
do they need it?)

3. How do I translate the numeric codes into
mailmerge fields?

That's enough for now I think. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

Jeffrey
 
K

Kim Mitchell

I am assuming that you are using MS Word. Have you thought of using
AutoCorrect. You add the codes and the replacement text to the list.
Whenever the codes are typed into the document, they are automatically
replaced. Formatting and other features would have to be handled elsewhere.
HTH

Kim
 

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