Excel Help

[Josh_C]

Hey all, I am running into an issue with Excel. I have a word document that auto populates based on fields in an excel spreadsheet. I have it set to check the excel spreadsheet whenever I open the word document. So that's all fine and good. But here is what I want to do: use this word document/excel sheet as a template setup. So, for every new client I have, I want to create a new folder. In that folder I will already have the same excel sheet and word document set up. But I don't want to have to go in and re-do the linking each time. So is there a way to create a dummy folder that I can use to create each new client folder, and then have the word/excel documents stay linked even when I change the name of the new folder to Client_Name?

For example, right now I have Dummy_Client.xls and Dummy_Client.docx. They are in My Documents/Dummy_Folder. But when I copy all the contents of Dummy_Folder into a folder for a new client, like Joe_Smith, I would want to have the Joe_Smith.xls and Joe_Smith.docx files stay linked, so that I can just pop into the excel sheet, change the info I need to change, and have everything go smoothly with the word document.

Any thoughts? Am I doing this the hard way? My goal is to just have a few documents in each new client folder auto populated with information like the client's name and a few case details.

[RDOwens]

If I am not mistaken, you can copy the directory/folder and everything below it will remain intact. So, copy My Documents/Dummy_Folder to My Documents/John Smith, but keep the files named Dummy_Client.xls and Dummy_Client.docx. That should work. Don't rename the files, only the directory.

[JDCoyle]

I agree with RDO, the problem will be when you change the file names, it would be best to set them up with a generic name and let the file structure be your organization.

Obviously I don't know what your document is, but is it possible to do everything in Excel and eliminate the need for the Word file? Excel it pretty robust, and with some clever cell merging and organization, you can replicate what would typically be a Word document. Just a suggestion!