Instructional Documents which change per Client

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networkn

Networkn
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#113154 8-Jan-2013 12:18

Hi There!

I am looking to create some documents for helping customers setup some devices which their particular information will change each document.

I want it to be as quick as possible for us to generate but as clear as possible for the customer.

I did consider doing an excel with an information key, which could be converted to PDF, but it seems messy.

Any ideas?

lurker

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#741559 8-Jan-2013 12:39

I did something like this a while ago, basically a bunch of lookup tables used in conjunction with the CONCATENATE command. I can't remember how I did it precisely, but basically the variable text obtained through the lookups is concatenated with the constant stuff. My document was a technical one where you'd enter the file being worked on and it basically it generated a step by step document with all the correct parameters specific to that file.

networkn

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#741560 8-Jan-2013 12:40

lurker: I did something like this a while ago, basically a bunch of lookup tables used in conjunction with the CONCATENATE command. I can't remember how I did it precisely, but basically the variable text obtained through the lookups is concatenated with the constant stuff. My document was a technical one where you'd enter the file being worked on and it basically it generated a step by step document with all the correct parameters specific to that file.

Yah that is what I want. Would you be willing to share it?

lurker

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#741583 8-Jan-2013 13:18

Those documents are with my previous employer.
But something along these lines:

You have a cell with the value that determines the text
eg E2="rick"

Then you have a table with all your variable data, eg from A2 to B4 this:
A B
2 baxter vodka
3 rick cola
4 jordan juice

Then you'd use VLOOKUP in a CONCATENATE command to string things together:

CONCATENATE("I'd like a ",VLOOKUP(E2,A2:B4,2,FALSE)," please")

Result="I'd like a cola please"

Hopefully that's a good starting point for you...

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#741622 8-Jan-2013 13:59

Maybe LaTeX if you're adventurous (it's a long time since I used it, but it worked well when I last did) or if not I think Word mail merge can output documents?

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