Objective: to automatically fill an MS Access table with data
extracted from several word documents with form defined fields

Description: I have developed a word document with about 250 form
fields. I now have some 500 files filled in and I need to compile all
the data into an MS Access table.

What I have done:
With my knowledge, I have to 
1. open each word document
2. select from the tools/save menu the ?Save data only for forms?
3. select from the File menu ?Save copy as? and save a plain text document
4. go to MS Access and choose File / Get External data / Import,
select the text document, change the text qualifier to none (I don?t
know why but if I don?t each letter from words ends up in a different
column)
5. import the data into an existing table

Also, because when some fields were filled out people used the ?Enter?
key (ex: when filling in an address with two lines, but using only one
field), I need to go through the text file I create on step 3 and
delete the line breaks, replacing them by a simple space, so that all
the info from a given field remains together.

What I need:
Bare in mind that I have some 500 word documents to process, so, what
I want is to automate this process.

Best case scenario, I would get a small app on which I would select a
folder where all the word documents lie (or directly select a group of
word files) and it would extract the info from all the fields and
group it into a simple table, one row per file, one column per field.

Finally, if I could get the MS Word file name to also get imported
into the database to help me identify the record, it would be great.

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Request for Question Clarification by theta-ga on 20 Sep 2006 05:29 PDT

Hi ncrisp01-ga,
   The problem you have outlined seems best solved by a utility that
would process all the MS Word files in a directory and add the form
field data into the Access DB. Before I further explore this
direction, could you please clarify the following points:
   - What version of MS Word and MS Access are you using?
   - Would it be possible for you to upload a sample Word document
with all the form fields on to a server somewhere? This will help us
to gain a better idea of the amount of work required to extract data
from it.
   - Would I be correct in assuming you want all the form fields to be
extracted into a single table in the access db?
 
Also, since the task requires the development of a custom utility to
solve your problem, I request that you take another look at pricing
your question accordingly. you can find the GA pricing guideline here:
http://answers.google.com/answers/pricing.html

Regards,
Theta-ga
:)

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Request for Question Clarification by theta-ga on 22 Sep 2006 05:40 PDT

Hi ncrisp01-ga,
  Please indicate if you would like me to go ahead and develop the
application you require. If you have already found a solution, you can
expire this question.

Regards,
Theta-ga
:)