How does QuickLaw integrate with MS Word?

We were very early adopters of Microsoft’s OLE technology. We “drive” Word via OLE or ActiveX from within Access.

All of the form letters were kept in the database as OLE fields, although they were simply standard Word documents. Inside each letter were Word bookmarks with names that matched keywords in QuickLaw.

When you do a letter QuickLaw:

• Makes a copy of the form letter and inserts it into the database for the current case
• Points an Access OLE container that is hidden on the Documents form to the new OLE record
• Opens the new document in Word separately (OLE Open command)
• Loops through the Bookmarks collection in Word and inserts data from the database in each bookmark that it recognizes.
• Saves the document
• Leaves the user in the document for editing and printing

The document is still open in an OLE field on the Documents form in Access. When the document is closed by the user a “Close” event is fired in Access, and QuickLaw asks if you want to update the database with the bookmark data. If you answer yes, QuickLaw opens the file back up again in Word, loops through all the bookmarks, only this time it saves the data to the database from the bookmark rather than the other way around.

This was a great feature because you could build the case data as you did the forms and letters. The drawback is that reading the data back from the letters was s-l-o-w.

Field names

The Field names that QuickLaw recognizes come from the Party list, Case Information screen, and Case Date screen. Follow those links to find out the details.