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Document Generation in Microsoft Office

By Jon Harwokey

Republish: EasyPublish™
Published: 19Aug2010
Word count: 531
Viewed: 553 time(s)

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Document generation involves creating document templates and then automatically populating those templates with data. Most document generation software only allows users to insert data into 3 different sections of a document, which are the header, body, and footer. This lack of flexibility can be very frustrating and time consuming. The process becomes much easier when the document generation software is integrated into products that most people are already familiar with, such as Microsoft Office.

A good piece of document generation software will usually incorporate into software that your workforce is already accustomed to. Microsoft Office Suite is one of the most widely used suites of office software, so if your document generation software will incorporate into that suite it is much easier for your users to pick up. One example would be that you can create a document in Microsoft Word and then publish the document as a data template. Then the template can be easily populated with data and distributed to different audiences.

Generating documents is normally tedious, difficult, and expensive because businesses use outdated software that hasn't grown with the needs of the company. Also, the process may be so complicated that teams of development staff spend large amounts of time developing and maintaining reports and documentation. If the software is incorporated into tools that non-technical resources are accustomed to, such as Microsoft Office, the process can be streamlined into an efficient task that only requires a minimal amount of time and resources.

Some document software has the ability to create reports from multiple sources of data. One example is that you might want to create a document that retrieves sales figures from a Microsoft Access database and marketing data from an Excel spreadsheet and display them together in the same report. This is a very useful feature and you should make sure to look for this feature in any document generation software that you might be evaluating.

Another attractive feature of document generation software is providing the ability for multiple users to collaborate on the design of document templates. Newer doc gen programs can integrate into software such as Microsoft SharePoint. This is a very useful feature as it allows multiple users to create and collaborate on the design of the report. Users can check out document templates, make changes, and then save them back to the SharePoint folder. SharePoint can then take care of tracking the changes and keeping track of the different versions, so that a previous version of the document can be quickly recovered if needed.

Document generation software is a very powerful tool for any company that is required to manage and distribute large amounts of documentation. It is even more valuable when it integrates into existing software such as Microsoft Office. By integrating with Microsoft Office a user can generate a document template from a Word document, Excel spreadsheet, or even a PowerPoint presentation and then populate it with data from an Access or SQL Server database. Being able to generate a report from the most widely used, powerful office suite in the world also gives you the power to generate the most effective documentation possible with the skills that your workforce already possess.

As a software developer, Jon Harwokey often uses document generation software to share his progress with managers and clients. Windward Reports allows him to have the right reporting tools for the right situation. Without a solid business reporting solution, he would be spending much more time creating reports instead of focusing on client's needs.

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