I am asking for help for a person on another Word forum who is reluctant to join another one. After much discussion, which I stayed out of because I don't use links very much, the main question became this: is her approach OK or is there a better one that she and her client (both inexperienced in VBA and databases) could accomplish? Thanks, I really value your opinions.
Pam
Summary: I’m using Word 2003 on Windows 7. The purpose of the project is to publish 8 publications consisting mostly of questions. Master questions are in table format and need to be expressed exactly the same way each time the question is used in one of the publications. We need a central repository of questions, and an automated or managed way of gathering the questions from the central repository into the 8 different publications. The questions are used multiple times in the different documents. Eight documents will be saved as PDFs and be published online and on paper. I’m to set it up so the client will be able to revise the publications annually.
More info: The main part of each publication is a table comprising a few hundred questions, each with several alternative answers; the publication preparer selects one answer for each question. I've been calling the master questions document, already created, the master document. We want to link each master question to where it belongs, in one or more of the 8 publications. When a question is revised in the central repository, we want the publication documents to update automatically. In other words, I want a change in the master document reflected in the destination document. The fact that questions are laid out in tables seems to be a problem.
I was trying to do it through Word, but having the links in a table has been a problem. Someone suggested that Excel would do it better. The publications need to be professional quality. I have to have precise control over leading, paragraph spacing, margins, table border widths, standoff from the border, etc. The client wants something that she’ll be able to update in the future herself. That means using software that’s readily available and not difficult for a non-designer, non-editor to use (she originally suggested Excel or Access).
If getting into VBA is beyond me, maybe the issue is moot. I’m usually very good at figuring out software, but I’m not a big user of databases (I’m an editor), so my experience there is limited.
