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General discussion

Repetitive info automatically entered in a WORD document?

Apr 30, 2007 12:21AM PDT

I work for a human services company and when we do an intake interview we have to fill out 8 different forms using WORD 2000 on 1 computer and WORD 2002 on a 2nd computer for a total of 12 sheets of paper. Much of the information is repetitive from form to form, person's name, DOB, SSN etc plus children's info. I would like to combine them into a single document of about 5 pages. However, I would like to have repetitive information automatically entered into the appropriate place on each page once it is entered the first time. Is it possible to do so and how would I do it? Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Larry

Discussion is locked

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Without using macros, I can think of 2 possibilities
Apr 30, 2007 5:40AM PDT

There may be better ways but you could consider using Headers & Footers, (View > Headers and Footers), or using Tables.

Headers and Footers automatically repeat on each page and you can place what you like in them, but the problem is they are what they are, ie a header and/or footer, and so you may not like where they are positioned on the page.

The other is a table. If these forms could be re-formatted into tables, then you can format the tables to display headers on each page. If you create your table and place the text that is to be repeated in the first row, then right click the table and select Table Properties, then select the "Row" tab, you can specify that this row repeats as a header row on each page.

Again there may be problems with placement in a document, but with careful planning it could be done.

If you don't like the fact that the table has borders around each cell, you highlight the whole table, right click, and under "Borders and Shading" remove all borders. The outlines will still be visible in the main window, but the printed document will be border free.

But I bet there are better solutions.

Mark

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Thanks, Headers are doing me a lot of good
May 6, 2007 10:23PM PDT

Thanks for the advice. I am using Headers which can take care of 50% of my repetitive entries. I'm going to see what I can learn about macros. I use macros in Excel but I don't know how to use them in WORD. If you have advice on this part I'll certainly look into that also. Larry

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Not me,
May 7, 2007 5:45AM PDT

I'm like you, I can do Excel macros but have never tried VBA in Word.

Perhaps others here will have an idea.

Mark

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Thanks for your response
May 7, 2007 10:26PM PDT

Hi, thanks for your response. I was trying to send my last response to everyone as a group since each person provided helpful ideas but I guess I need to learn how to do that. I think the best way to do that us to respnd to my own message and address the introduction for everyone. Larry

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Not to write something obvious but...
Apr 30, 2007 7:24AM PDT

There is rather nice HR Software today that does all this for the HR people. Be sure you have looked at such.

Bob

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To print out such,....
Apr 30, 2007 1:20PM PDT

...I created the forms using MS Excel, and used the "=" function to enter repetitive information automatically. Worked with me. Looked fine when printed out, but not so nice on screen. Since you are going to create the document anew, perhaps you can give this a try.

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(NT) You can use cross-references to copy content on the fly.
May 7, 2007 9:47PM PDT