The Best Way to Fill a Pre Printed Form With Various Data

[MichaelD]

Hello,

I have a legacy form which I am mandated to use to do an inventory of

material on a daily basis.

1. The form is used on a monthly basis and a new form must be made each

month.

1. All header information is preprinted and does not change.

2. The body consists of seventeen lines.

a. Each line has three different fields of information that is subject

to change.

(1) The name of the item. Max 25 char. This needs to wrap to fit in

the box.

(2) The quantity. Max 2 digits.

(3) Serial numbers. This can be from one to eleven digits. It may

also express a range such as 12345-12346

b. Some lines will be deleted each month, and some new lines will be

added each month.

c. Each line has 31 blocks which are manually checked when doing

inventory.

3. The footer has 4 items of information.

a. The month (January, February, etc.).

b. The page number (single digit)

c. The number of pages (single digit)

d. The container number (single digit).

Right now I am producing the monthly forms manually which means I must type

in each element every time every month.

I want to automate this so that I can simply edit the information for the

body of the form, deleting items no longer in possession, and adding those

few items added each month.

The forms should be produced with the body lines in alpha-numeric order with

a different batch for each container with the page and number of pages

reflecting the number of forms produced for that container. I want to begin

with a new batch of page and number of pages for each container. Once the

body information is modified for the month, I want to produce the forms for

all containers in a single execution.

I tried to produce this in MS Access using reports, but reached the 754

limit on controls.

Does anyone have any ideas about the best way to go about automating this???

Thank you

--

Michael D

Seoul ROK

[Anne Troy]

Hi, Michael.

I'm not sure I understand, but I don't want to get into anything lengthy until I find out whether you've resolved this or not.

I'll tell you something, tho.

Somewhere, I've got an Excel "label maker".

You fill in the address, PO, etc., you tell it the start number and the end number, and it prints that many labels (box 1 of XXX, box 2 of XXX) to a Word template pre-formatted for appropriate label size.

Is this SOMEthing like what you need?

[MichaelD]

Anne,

That's not what I need. If it were as simple as a sequential numerical list, I'd have it finished.

When this inventory of mine is finished each month, most items remain for the next month, however, there are always a few deletions and additions. Right now I must re-type each page manually for the new month, leaving out the deletions, and adding in the colums where appropriate, the additions.

Since most of the items remain the same from month to month, I am searching for a form in which I can simply massage the data using cut and paste to move the data as needed. The best tool I have now is Form Flow, but it does a terrible job of handling cut and paste. I find it faster to type the entire form over than use FormFlow to cust and paste.

Thanks for your reply. You're the only one brave enough to hazard a reply in a month...

Mike DeBurgh

Seoul ROK