Macro that will search folders on network drive and extract customer details?

Bob Crabtree

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Is there some macro (or VBA app) that can be created to search folders on a network drive and extract customer details from MSWord .doc files?

I do understand that this might be something I'll have to pay for.

TIA

Cheers

Bob C
 
Do you not know who your clients are? What is the purpose of such a tool and just HOW could it extract such info as you can put in anything an a DOC file and in any format you want? How is any app going to know what such data is when compared to the body of the text?
 
I'm the client in this instance.

These are the records of my clients held on my in-house server; and I want that information.

As for your questions...

...I have no answers; I was hoping someone else would have them.

Cheers

Bob C
 
I'm the client in this instance.
These are the records of my clients held on my in-house server; and I want that information.
You will have to provide a clearer description of what these documents are, and whose they are, in order to get much help. It appears to me they are documents provided by/obtained from your clients and you are trying to determine the client's identity from their contents. Is that correct? If not, please do clarify, e.g., who exactly authored the documents?
 
So you keep your business records in Word? Nothing more sophisticated than that?
You never heard the term, Horse for courses?

It works, it's not broken.

In the past, I used to teach people to use MS Access but never found it (or any CRM system) suitable to my needs - which are pretty basic, truth to tell.
 
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You will have to provide a clearer description of what these documents are, and whose they are, in order to get much help. It appears to me they are documents provided by/obtained from your clients and you are trying to determine the client's identity from their contents. Is that correct? If not, please do clarify, e.g., who exactly authored the documents?

Fairy Nuff.

I've attached one of my blank job sheets as a PDF.

All I'm trying to do - and, really, it's not urgent - is extract the client info: Name, Address, Tel; Mobile; email. Nothing else.

In fact, all I really want is the name and phone numbers - just so I can see who called me if I miss any calls on the landline while I'm out of the office.

And, no, it's not practical to put all my clients' phone numbers on my landline phone - and I don't think there is going to be any phone with sufficient memory for that.

I have a telephone answer machine built into the phone but the first thing a lot of people do when one of those kicks in is ring off (though I do change my message every time I leave the office).

I'd just like to check who I'm calling if I call back a number that left no message for me - and 80% of calls are from existing clients.

And, of course, I have a mobile with me when I'm out and about - but will not answer this if I am driving, even though I have the technology to do that hands-free; it's too much of a distraction.

Cheers

Bob C
 

Attachments

Wow, that is a first. I've never seen a tech use Word files to do invoices. God bless your accountant. If this was in Excel you'd have a chance but here there are no true records that can be parsed no even a consistent place for a delimiter.

As for the phone issue. Don't they have caller ID in England?
 
If you're just trying to find the word document that contains that phone number, try FreeCommanderXE. In the navigation pane, click the directory that holds the docs, Do Ctrl+F, put ".doc" in the File name search argument and the phone number in the "Containing ..." argument. I use it to quickly locate the license details for customers where I have numerous TXT files containing license keys I've sold (and for which I enter customer details and date beside the key), one TXT doc per batch of purchased keys
 
To be honest I'd just take 15 minutes here and there when i'm not busy to manually copy the client information into a CSV. Might take a while but you said yourself it's not urgent.

Once you have the data in CSV format it's easy to import into other systems if you decide to upgrade to a more manageable solution.
 
Wow, that is a first. I've never seen a tech use Word files to do invoices. God bless your accountant. If this was in Excel you'd have a chance but here there are no true records that can be parsed no even a consistent place for a delimiter.

As for the phone issue. Don't they have caller ID in England?
Would be good if you had actually read my posting before replying with what, to me, is a highly superior attitude.

I hope you don't treat your clients that way - though in my experience in the UK too many IT "experts" do, which is just one of the reasons my clients come to me, not anyone else.

I am my own accountant - in as much as I do all the paperwork and submit my own tax returns online. I got sick of paying accountants fees when I'd done all the work for them already.

As for caller ID - yes, we've got that in the UK, though there's a small fee, it's not free. It tells me the caller's phone number (unless they've set up their phone to withold that information) and that's the VERY reason why a list of clients and their phone numbers could be useful, as I explained.

Walks off shaking head and muttering...
 
To be honest I'd just take 15 minutes here and there when i'm not busy to manually copy the client information into a CSV. Might take a while but you said yourself it's not urgent.

Once you have the data in CSV format it's easy to import into other systems if you decide to upgrade to a more manageable solution.

Fact is, I don't want the information bad enough to waste any of my time doing it myself (but it would be nice, given that I have over 1,000 clients), hence my original posting.

And, I feel you are being just a little presumptious about the manageability or otherwise of my system.

Cheers

Bobb
 
@Bob Crabtree if you have that many clients, then seriously consider using some form of management system. There are many on the marketplace.

Having such, would greatly aid you in your repair business.

@nlinecomputers our caller id, is simply that a telephone number, it doesnt list any names. So without a searchable solution, youd be grasping as straws wondering who it is who has rang. Especially res clients.. Unless the number is withheld at their end, in which case it doesnt appear.
 
If your business is anything like ours you'll probably find that most of your calls are from the same 5-10% of your clients, which would be no more than 100 in your case. The efficient solution would be to add the names of each of these frequent callers to your phone as you pick up their messages - pretty much any modern phone will handle a hundred names without choking. You can skip first-time callers and people you rarely hear from, and assuming that it takes about a minute to add each one then you can get the bulk of it done in less than two hours spread over several weeks.

Not every problem needs a technical solution.

I do this with my mobile, which a lot of my clients ring me on. Also if theres the pita client, there are tags I enter.. ;)
 
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