Convert Word document into Access Form?

po0k

Is it possible to convert my existing word document layout into a usable form for Access?
The layout is perfect and I ahd a go at Access there, and it's too bloody awkward and cluttered to work with.
Surely they're intergrated enough to allow me to do this?

po0k

Is there a way to import or even a basic Copy+Paste method of doing it?

Tis wrecking my head with it's immovable shíte.

marauder

I have done some Access stuff on 97 and 2000 and from designing the forms there I doubt you could do it....
If you are design view you can paste from word you will get either an embedded word doc object, a text label or a picture. You will not have any fields associated with any tables in your database.
You are right though the form design interface is all over the place. Haven't used OfficeXP though so it might be better/easier.

if you get it to work post how you do it.....

po0k

feck

I'll look into fields in word.

Might be able to do something.

Tis féckin annoying
thank christ this is an iso and I didn't actually have to pay for the shíte.

StarOffice...hmmm.....

Inspector Gadget

...it only goes the other way (Access Report -> Word Doc). However, you may find that OLE is smart enough to convert text cut-and-pasted from Word into suitably-formatted label controls in your report... (at least I've had this happen with Access 2000) ...maybe you could attack the problem in a piecemeal fashion?

Gadget

po0k

as in insert "fields" in each cell that requires text entry and link it to the database externally?
Dunno if that would work.
It *should* work, if any logic was put into an office package they deem fit to charge €700 for (Compustore).
On the back/cover of the Access2000 box there's an image of the database and a form supposedly created with Access which looks damn pretty.
So damn pretty in fact that I reckon it's a photoshop

Thank christ I cloneCD'd this piece of shíte.
tis not worthy to be marketed as an office suite.

Inspector Gadget

...Word isn't designed to do reports - it's designed for people to write documents on. Word isn't meant to understand the idea of report "bands" (detail, group headers etc.), and only has limited ability to support embedded fields (namely, Mail Merge-type functionality). Although a printed report could easily be mocked up in Word, Word itself doesn't have underlying database support - it wouldn't still be just a word processor if it did.

On the other side of the coin, Access, because it's being given a lump of formatted text (with perhaps some graphics), with no pre-marked fields, it has no idea where to actually put the content - the page header/footer it can take a guess at, but it has no idea what should go into the report header and footer bands, or the detail band (the absence of data fields puts paid to accurate identification of what goes in here), or the group header/footer bands...

...anyway, there are a number of reasons why a straight document->report import would be unfeasible; even if you did suck the text data etc. straight in, you'd need to determine where in the report all of the data should go so there'd be a bit of human intervention (and a bit of time) involved whether you like it or not...

Just my 2c...
Gadget

po0k

...anyway, there are a number of reasons why a straight document->report import would be unfeasible; even if you did suck the text data etc. straight in, you'd need to determine where in the report all of the data should go so there'd be a bit of human intervention (and a bit of time) involved whether you like it or not...

That is exactly what I'd like to be able to do, to import the document as a layout, then apply fields to the cells (the document is just structured rows and columns), then tell the cell that it gets/puts it's info in field Xa on Ya table of Database Za, and that this other cell gets/puts its info in field Xb on Ytable of Database Z and that another cell gets/puts its data in field Xa on Yb table of database Za etc.
I would actually prefer having manual control over it due to it being such a small database (prehaps 60-80 fields).

I suppose I'll jsut have to hack away at the rediculous layout tools given to me in Access, even thogh the least they could've done is mak it more like word with the field assignments integrated.

Inspector Gadget

...there's the small difficulty that Word uses two methods of positioning text (page-based, which gets affected by operations like repagination) and frame-based (such as text boxes inserted using the drawing tools, or using anchors). Access only supports the latter, using textual controls, and would need a sophisticated layout engine (such as that used in Word itself) added before it could translate page-based positions to cell-based positions, allowing for wrapping and correction of overlapping elements.

Oh well, back to the drawing board it seems...
Gadget