Document Assembly

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I’m new to this and just feeling my way around. My principal want is a way to set up Office (Word, mostly) to do document assembly so that I can avoid repetitive typing. I’ve been able to do this before when I was practicing law some years ago. In that case I was doing either pleadings or Bankruptcy forms, each of which I started with a basic document that identified all pertinent information. Has anyone else (not a programmer) been able to do this from scratch; and if so, how did you do it.

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Would a template do the job, or are you looking for something a little more involved?

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Would a template do the job, or are you looking for something a little more involved?

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Art: That’s one of the things I “do”. I am a software consultant to law firms in the Portland, OR area. I use Ghostfill document assembly software… it’s a great tool.
Char

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Thank you! I’ll look the program up.

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Thank you! I’ll look the program up.

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Art: That’s one of the things I “do”. I am a software consultant to law firms in the Portland, OR area. I use Ghostfill document assembly software… it’s a great tool.
Char

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Hi Art:
Welcome to the Lounge. I’m not familiar with software that assembles documents, but some of the other Loungers may be. But if you’re talking about avoiding repetitive typing in Word, then there are many options within Word that do so. I can’t tell from your original question what your looking for specifically. If it’s how to use things like templates (like Mark mentioned), AutoText, REF fields & bookmarks, mail merge, etc., then the question is better asked in the Word forum.
Cheers,

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Hi Art:
Welcome to the Lounge. I’m not familiar with software that assembles documents, but some of the other Loungers may be. But if you’re talking about avoiding repetitive typing in Word, then there are many options within Word that do so. I can’t tell from your original question what your looking for specifically. If it’s how to use things like templates (like Mark mentioned), AutoText, REF fields & bookmarks, mail merge, etc., then the question is better asked in the Word forum.
Cheers,

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Hi Art,
A few years back I used Word AutoCorrect to create a complete boilerplate Will document setup for a law firm. All of the possible Will paragraphs were identified with labels like W1, W43, etc. When you entered a label, the entire formatted Will paragraph would spit out. It would even stop and wait for the user to type in names and dates, then continue with the rest of the paragraph. It can be done. Just like the old CPT stand-alone word processor and those huge 8″ floppy disks! Search the Word Help Index and the Lounge Word Forum under “boilerplate” and “AutoCorrect” to get started.
Good luck,
Kris

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Thanks, Kris.
I understand what you’re suggesting, and indeed I have done that. What I need is a series of linked documents, starting with an information source document, sort of like Mergmail, that will fill in blanks in several documents in seriatim, such as Form of Agreement, Exhibits, Addenda, Schedules, Cover Letter, etc. Right now I have to do a ‘cut-and-paste’ from one document to another which wastes time with the switching back and forth between various documents. The Autocorrect function is great for changing text within a specific document, but I haven’t figured out how to export a list of document terms and conditions from one document to another. The search-and replace function is a crude tool for this kind of work, and can only be used for one term at a time; even then the fields appear to be too small to be of any real use. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Art Silen

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Hi Art:
There are fields that will fill in from one or more source documents automatically. Using either {INCLUDETEXT} fields or {LINK} fields will handle that, especially inconjunction with {AutoTextList} fields.

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Hi Art:
There are fields that will fill in from one or more source documents automatically. Using either {INCLUDETEXT} fields or {LINK} fields will handle that, especially inconjunction with {AutoTextList} fields.

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Thanks, Kris.
I understand what you’re suggesting, and indeed I have done that. What I need is a series of linked documents, starting with an information source document, sort of like Mergmail, that will fill in blanks in several documents in seriatim, such as Form of Agreement, Exhibits, Addenda, Schedules, Cover Letter, etc. Right now I have to do a ‘cut-and-paste’ from one document to another which wastes time with the switching back and forth between various documents. The Autocorrect function is great for changing text within a specific document, but I haven’t figured out how to export a list of document terms and conditions from one document to another. The search-and replace function is a crude tool for this kind of work, and can only be used for one term at a time; even then the fields appear to be too small to be of any real use. Thanks for the suggestion, though.

Art Silen

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Hi Art,
A few years back I used Word AutoCorrect to create a complete boilerplate Will document setup for a law firm. All of the possible Will paragraphs were identified with labels like W1, W43, etc. When you entered a label, the entire formatted Will paragraph would spit out. It would even stop and wait for the user to type in names and dates, then continue with the rest of the paragraph. It can be done. Just like the old CPT stand-alone word processor and those huge 8″ floppy disks! Search the Word Help Index and the Lounge Word Forum under “boilerplate” and “AutoCorrect” to get started.
Good luck,
Kris

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