On 09/10/2008 07:16, Brian Barker wrote:
At 12:46 09/10/2008 +1100, Keith Bates wrote:
When I perform marriages I need to fill in about three or four forms
[...] At the moment, most of them are filled in by hand because it's
easier than making the effort to organise templates etc. to print the
information into the right spot on the form. What I'm thinking is
make a document (spreadsheet?) to enter the information then have OO
put that into the right places so I can print onto the forms.
Either you or I may be slightly confused here! Entering the
information into a separate document is one way to go, but it wouldn't
avoid the work you seem to be fighting shy of. There is no magical
way that the information would know where to appear, so you would need
to have "made the effort", as you put it, to create that template
first. And once you have created that template, there is no obvious
reason - at least using the technique I'm going to suggest - why
having a separate document for input would be any easier.
Here's an idea:
o Scan the form.
o Create a new text (Writer) document the same size as your form.
o Go to Insert | Picture > | From File... and browse to your scanned
form.
o Go to Format | Picture... (or right-click | Picture...) and change
some settings. On the Type tab, under Anchor, select "To page"; and
under Position, select Left for Horizontal and Top for Vertical. On
the Options tab, under Properties, remove the tick from Print.
(That's the clever bit.)
o Select the picture and drag its bottom right corner to the
corresponding corner of the page (that's the entire page, of course -
beyond any margins). Now that you have the picture filling the page,
it may be difficult to see how to deselect the picture: I find that
pressing the Esc key accomplishes this.
o With the picture deselected, go to Insert | Frame... . You will
probably need to change some settings here, too. On the Type tab,
remove the tick from AutoSize. On the Borders tab, select "- None -".
o Drag and resize the frame to coincide with the area on the form
where the text needs to be inserted.
o Repeat the last two steps, creating a separate frame for each
required entry.
o Go to File | Templates > | Save... and save the document as a
template.
o (Close the document, discarding changes.)
Each time you need to use the template, fill in the frames and print
on the blank form. Note that the background image of the form will
not print. Save as a document file for reference if desired.
If you want to be able to enter text separately or to retrieve it from
another document, one way is to use linked sections. Create suitably
named sections to contain the relevant text in the source text
document. In your template, put the cursor into each frame in turn
and insert a section into the frame. On the Section tab of the Insert
Section dialogue, tick Link, use the "..." button to browse to the
source file, and select the relevant named section from the drop-down
menu at Section. Remember to use Tools | Update > | Links when
necessary in using the template. But I fancy that it will be difficult
to format the sections in such a way as to be absolutely sure that the
text will be neatly formatted without checking it over in the document
itself - which may render the indirect technique of no particular
benefit.
I trust this helps.
Brian Barker
I get the impression that Mr. Bates wants to have the same data inserted
at different places within the same form and/or in different forms.
Inserting the same value in different places in a document can be
achieved with fields and variables. I don't think you can have a field
whose value is defined and which then becomes available in different
documents. So it may be necessary to have all the forms in a single
document. There's a guide to using fields in Chapter 14 of the Writer's
Guide at
<http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Writer_Guide/Working_with_Fields>.
In particular see the subsection entitled "Using other fields to hold
information that changes"
--
Harold Fuchs
London, England
Please reply *only* to [email protected]
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
