I have a question I have been unable to answer and so I am turning to the donation coder community for help.

I currently assembling documents in a way that strikes me as inefficient. To create one document, I print out various MS word, PowerPoint, PDF, etc. files and then physically assemble them after printing into one large document.

I am looking for a solution that allows me to have a master document that references the files on my computer, allowing me to organize their order, edit the documents (in their native applications), and, finally, print the result.

The master document feature built-in to MS word does not work, as it only allows you to edit word and excel document (not PowerPoint). Printing all of the files to a single PDF does not work, as I need to edit the documents even after they are assembled.

I have two solutions that come close to solving my problem, but are not quite there.

1) Using the MS word master document feature, but imbedding the files as OLE objects. The drawback of this method is that, so far as I can tell, OLE object cannot be embedded with relative (as apposed to absolute) paths. I work on many of my files from a USB drive which means the drive letter changes as I work on different computers. Also imbedding all of the documents (40+) results in a rather cumbersome 13MB word file.

2) I can reference all of the files as html links in MS word document, but if I rename the file or save the file in a different location, the like does not automatically update as do OLE object.

I think part of the reason I cannot find a solution to my problem is that I am not expressing it in the correct terminology.

If anyone has any suggestions, I would appreciate the help. Thank you.

Regards,

The3seashells

Let me begin by saying The Form Letter Machine (TFLM) is a fantastic peerless program. I use it everyday for a wide range of correspondence in a professional setting. Because I am using it for such a wide range of tasks, I have encountered a few aspects with variable management that are slightly inconvenient.

For one of my configuration trees, I have almost 40 variables, and the variables are expanding. So far as I can tell, the variables displayed in the “Key” / “Value” portion of the screen are displayed in the order where they are first found within the configuration tree. This usually means they are displayed in a random order and, with 40 variables, it can mean quite a bit of hunting to find the correct variable.

Also, the displayed variables are shared between trees even if a given variable isn’t present in the currently viewed configuration tree.

4 modifications / features would make this program vastly easy for configuration trees with many variables.

• Display the variables in alphabetical order.
  
  
• Only display the variables used in the currently activated portions of the tree. For example, if my currently selected checkbox items and radiobutton items make no use of the %MeetingDate% variable, the variable should be hidden.
  
  
• Allow variables to be clicked on and filled in as in a form in a word document. When looking at the entire document (the bottom left area where the entire letter is shown), it would be much easier to type in the information there than hunt for, and then update the variable from the variable list.
  
  
• Clearly mark unfilled variables in the ‘completed letter preview’ area. I find myself spending the majority of my post TFLM proofing time checking to make sure I have not forgotten to included / replace all of the needed variable names.

As I have said, I love using TFLM, but if something similar to these steps outlined above was implemented, it would make its use much easier.

Thank you.

Regards,

the3seashells