Integrating TCP with Word to Create New Merge Forms.

Transcription

1 Integrating TCP with Word to Create New Merge Forms. TCP arranges to create merge data files against Word forms. While most forms merge against a file that resides on your local machine called datadoc.dat, some forms merge against other data documents. This document will help you to create new forms in Word you can use to merge against TCP data for your own business purposes. A Primer on Word Merge Word Mail Merge takes a form document and combines it with a data document to create a new document, as illustrated in the following rather inartful diagram: Word Form Document Data Document Finished Merged Document Often the data document is a number of records, such as 50 addresses, so that the form document is one page (maybe a form letter), but the finished merged document is 50 pages (fifty letters to individuals). Each record creates a new page. Sometimes, however, the form document is a Directory document, which would create 50 entries on one or more pages, depending on the amount of data. A TCP Calendar is an example of a Directory merged document. So the data document will be slightly different depending on the needs of the merge form. For something like a complaint, which uses just one record (one defendant), there is only one record in the data document. For something like a calendar (many defendants), there are many records. The following table illustrates the ouput: Merge Form Type Single Page Merge Directory + + Data Document Type Record 1 Record 2 Record 3 Record 1 Record 2 Record 3 Finished Document New Document 1 New Document 2 New Document 3 New Document with Line 1, Line 2, Line 3

2 Creating a Merge Form The main challenge in creating any Word merge form is to have a data document in place that it can merge against. Without that data document, you can t specify columns (also known as fields), to merge against. A typical data document might contain a set of names and addresses: John,Jones,11 High Way,Widmark,CA,90013 Mary,Smith,13 B Street,Minneapolis,MN, and so on. The above represents a comma separated values, or CSV, file. The comma separates the individual entries. CSV files are often delimited ; that is, each of the entries is set off with some character, such as a quote mark ( ). Doing this allows for commas to imbedded in the data column: John, Jones, 11 High Way, Widmark, CA, Mary, Smith, 13 B Street, Minneapolis, MN, Linda, Roper, 23 Zenith Avenue, Apartment 5, Miami, FL, Without the quote mark, the third entry above would fail because it has too many columns. By fail we mean that the reading application (in this case, Word), would get mixed up trying to parse the document into individual columns to do the merge. There are other ways to create data documents, such as xml, spreadsheets, and sql databases. TCP3 uses the simple CSV file because Word and other word processor applications read it easily. Normally, the first record in a CSV file might contain the column names of the data, so that you have a sense what the data is. This is called adding metadata to the data file: it is data about the data that you are generating: First_Name, Last_Name, Address, City,State, Zip John, Jones, 11 High Way, Widmark, CA, Mary, Smith, 13 B Street, Minneapolis, MN, Linda, Roper, 23 Zenith Avenue, Apartment 5, Miami, FL, Providing data like this allows Word to name your data packets; when you build a merge form, you just have to select from your set of columns to get a particular piece of data. We ll cover that in a minute. But as we said, the first task is to produce the data. To do this, make sure you have downloaded a complaint form and a calendar form from the TCP Website. The complaint form is designed for a single merge; the calendar form is designed for merging multiple records that share a common court date. Put these forms into your network tcp3\frm directory. (Hint: you might also want to back up these forms in some other directory.)

3 Now go into TCP3, open any file, and go to the Comp Tab. To create a merge data form, press the Draft button: But we didn t want to draft a complaint, we want to create a new form letter to send out to, say, individual defendants about a case. What we will do at this point is go ahead and close both the TCP file and the Word complaint file without saving. Now we go back to Word and create a new document. Select the Mailings tab, Select Recipients, and Use existing list :

4 Now comes the hard part. We navigate to c:\program files\tcp3\dat, and find the file datadoc.dat. We ll need to select All files at the bottom for it to be visible: How did this file get created? When we performed the merge in the last step, we created, behind the scenes, DataDoc.dat, which is a CSV file. Note that in the above picture, Cal.dat is also visible. We ll get to that later; it s generated when you Draft a TCP3 calendar. Note that DataDoc.dat is created on your local hard drive. This is so multiple persons performing a merge will not overwrite each others files. You get your own data! Now we ll go ahead and Open that file. (Tip: Once Word opens a data file, it cannot be overwritten. You will need to exit your form before you can perform another merge.) Okay, now just for giggles, we ll click on Edit Recipient List in Word. You don t normally have to do this when creating a form, but it will give you a feel for the type of data you have. Note that the picture below contains just one file. That s because we created our data file out of just one TCP3 complaint file:

5 If we had multiple records, we could select from among them for performing the merge, or just have all selected. But for now, we ll go ahead and browse through the columns, making note of what they mean. When finished, we ll close that box, then start creating our form file. In Word, we re going to hard return a few lines, then add a date code, and address box. Left, I ve selected a date code from the Quick Parts template on the Insert tab. Preserve formatting means when the document is opened, the date will be updated. We use Created Date to lock in the date. Next, we select fields from the Merge Fields list and place them in the document, along with our form letter text:

6 TCP3 currently supports only a limited number of columns in DataDoc.dat. We will add more as time and interest permit. (Tip: This is a basic letter for illustration purposes. For an easier way to do basic letters, with more column support, use the TCP3 Letters Tab.) When satisfied, we save the form to a new name in the network tcp3\frm directory. You can access that form any time you want on an individual case using the Ye Olde Document Shoppe on the Other Tab in any TCP3 file. Creating a Directory for Multiple Records Now we ll create a multiple line document on a calendar. The document we want to make is a disposition detail document for the police department. We download a calendar form, then open the calendar in TCP3 and Draft: Again, we ll just close the calendar and this new document without saving, create a new document in Word, and select the Mailings tab. This time, we ll select Directory as our document type, which will keep each record from going on to a new page (this is real helpful when merging hundreds of data records!):

7 After that, we ll select an existing list of recipients as before, but this time pick the file c:\program files\tcp3\dat\caldat.dat: TIP: You might want to add c:\program files\tcp3 to your list of favorites on the left side of the dialog to make navigating more painless. Unfortunately, Word does not remember where you were last when you selected a data file. Now we re ready to build our form. A table template is often useful to display a number of records; here we ll create a table that gives the defendant s name, the ICR, and the disposition: Note that I ve actually created two tables, a header table (which I have put into a header in the document), and a second table for the data. You ll see why in a minute. Now would be a good time to save the form to something like dispos.docx in the network tcp3\frm directory. Again, backing up the form is always a good idea.

8 Now we ll select those records that actually had a disposition, but using the Edit Recipient List and checking only those that have a disposition code. We can do this manually, or by using a Word algorithm. Here we ve selected to filter our results using only those cases that have a disposition code: Our finished form document (a bit crude!) looks like this.

9 Now we just have to perform the merge, which produces a document that looks like this: The Following is a list... information will appear only at the top of each page, as it is in a header. Each data record we ve selected goes into a new row of the table. If you found this document helpful, please let us know at the HelpDesk. (If you did not, we don t want to hear from you just kidding! Please let us know how to make this and other help documents more, well, helpful to your practice!) TCP Group, This document is IntegratingTCPWithWord.pdf