Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Storing Simple Forms in AutoCorrect

Fields are real time-savers. The general technique is to create a form in Microsoft Word using empty form fields (Control F9 with F Lock key on), then give the document a descriptive name and save it as a Word template.

Every time you press Control F9 you create a field, which on the template is indicated with those curly brackets. You can’t just type those brackets. They are inserted automatically every time you press Control F9. An example of simple form might look something like this:

Patient’s Name: { }
Age: { }
Address: { }
Referred by: { }
Date of this visit: { }
First seen: { }
Medications: { }
Allergies: { }

Comments: { }

An alternative technique to saving the form as a document template is to highlight the entire form, including fields and borders, etc., then go straight into AutoCorrect while the form is still highlighted, and give the formatted text a descriptive code, such as pnotes. Make sure you save it as ‘formatted text’.

The next time you need to insert the form into a blank document, you just type the code and your form will appear looking like this:

Patient’s Name:
Age:
Address:
Referred by:
Date of this visit:
First seen:
Medications:
Allergies:

Comments:

As you can see, the brackets have gone but the fields are still there and you can jump from field to field by pressing F11 (with F Lock key on), and fill in the relevant details. The entry will be saved in the normal template.

I wouldn’t say that AutoCorrect entries are necessarily better than templates, since both work equally well, but I think AutoCorrect is excellent for storing forms such as thank-you notes, doctor’s notes, memo forms, receipt forms and the like.

As a general rule-of-thumb, if I am going to insert the form into an existing document, I always save it as an AutoCorrect entry.

If you want to include a date field on your form, this can be done through:Insert\Date and Time (Alt + i + t). This technique will work for all versions, including the latest, 2007. If you want the date to be dynamic so that it always displays the current date, you will need to tick the box labelled: Update automatically. This is the usual method for pre-formatted forms.

To save this feature across to AutoCorrect, highlight the date field (it will be shaded grey when you do) then open the AutoCorrect drop-down window and save the date field as formatted text with the code \date. Then every time you want to insert the current date you can either insert it as described above, or just type in the code. Choose the method that is quickest for you.

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