Training Needs Analysis

S

Sarah_Lecturer

Hi everyone!

Hope you can help? I need to develop a form which I can send to a number of
people. I intend for the majority of the forms to be sent out by email and a
few to be returned by post. To make my life easier I was hoping that I could
extract the information from the form into Excel or Access for analysis.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to which piece of software I should use
to develop this Training Needs Analysis form and how the data extraction
could take place upon receipt of completed forms? (I have contemplated using
InfoPath or Word?)

Thanks in advance,

Sarah
 
S

Sarah_Lecturer

Thanks Anne. Just wondering though - with the data extraction - is there any
fast way to extract data from a number of forms into the same table??

Thanks again
 
A

Anne Troy

That's going to require some VBA. The only place I can send you now is to
this article, which tells you how to run a macro on all files in a folder:
http://vbaexpress.com/kb/getarticle.php?kb_id=13
But that's slim pickens compared to what you need.
While I know people who can do it, it's not free.
You'll likely get much more help from the word.vba.general or access
programming (not sure of its name, I don't go there).
************
Hope it helps!
Anne Troy
www.OfficeArticles.com
Check out the NEWsgroup stats!
Check out: www.ExcelUserConference.com
 
B

Beth Melton

If you know how to use InfoPath then extracting the data should be
easy.

If you use Word and utilize form fields in Word then you can extract
the data from each form by saving the data only for forms. This option
is found under Tools/Options/Save and "Save data only for forms". The
resulting file is a CSV text file that can then be imported into
Access or Excel.

I'm not sure how many forms you plan on processing but you could
record a macro to gather the data. Basically you would need to:

- Create a new document called ImportData.txt to collect the records
(save and close)
- Open a document you want to extract the data from
- Turn on the macro recorder (Tools/Macros/Record New Macro)
- Go to Tools/Options/Save and turn on "Save data only for forms"
option
- Saves the document using a file name such as "NewData.txt"
- Close the file
- Open "ImportData.txt"
- Move the insertion point to the bottom of the document (Ctrl + End)
- Go to End/Insert File and inserts the contents of NewData.txt
- Save and close ImportData.txt

The macro can be assigned a keyboard shortcut or you could create
button on a toolbar to run the macro. Then as the documents are sent
back all you have to do is run the macro on each one. If you have a
lot then you could use the KB article Anne cited, looping through all
files in a folder, but that would also involve knowledge of VBA.

Either way, you can import the ImportData.txt into Access or Excel. If
you need to collect additional records then delete the contents of
ImportData.txt so it's ready to accumulate new records.

Please post all follow-up questions to the newsgroup. Requests for
assistance by email can not be acknowledged.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Beth Melton
Microsoft Office MVP

Word FAQ: http://mvps.org/word
TechTrax eZine: http://mousetrax.com/techtrax/
MVP FAQ site: http://mvps.org/
 
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