I’m working on automating some manual processes and looking for some ‘pointers’. We issue bulletins that have a sequential number, and a text subject. – like “Bull 1234 current subject”. The previous bulletin would have been “Bull 1233 previous subject”, and the next one will be “Bull 1235 different subject”.
Currently my macro throws up a dialogue box and asks the user to enter the Bull number and the Subject along with some other information. The next step saves the document as “Bull 1234 current subject.doc” and then the user is free to input the text of the bulletin.
So far the user has to look up the last Bull number, to enter the next one, and I’d like to automate this. I had a look at storing the Bull number as a document variable – but this doesn’t allow any room for error (i.e. a Bull that is started but not completed will throw the numbering off)
My idea is to create an ‘index doc’ that will live in the same folder (the only other docs in this directory would be Bull docs) that would serve both as an index and as a source for the next number. So my macro would need to open the index, take the last number, add one to it, return to the new document and after the user completes the dialog box and populate the subject field, save and close. If a Bull is unused then the index document could be edited accordingly (manually).
I’m assuming this is doable (I did something similar years ago in Word Basic), but appreciate any comments suggestions on how this would actually work in VB.
Many thanks 
