Tech

Create a survey form in Word

Word allows you to create forms, which you then can use for online data entry, to publish on the Web, or to print. Let's say you would like to create an evaluation form for your upcoming seminar. You want to include a number of questions that your attendees can answer online or on the printed form by selecting check boxes. Follow these steps:

1. Open a blank Word document.
2. Enter your first survey question, for example:
   I would recommend this seminar to a colleague.
3. Right-click a blank area of the Standard or Formatting toolbar and select Forms.
4. Position the cursor on the next line where you want the first check mark to appear.
5. Click the Check Box Form Field button on the Forms toolbar and type Strongly Agree.
6. On the next line, click the Check Box Form Field button and type Agree.
7. On the next line, click the Check Box Form Field button and type Disagree.
8. On the next line, click the Check Box Form Field button and type Strongly Disagree.
9. On the next line, click the Check Box Form Field button and type Does Not Apply.

Follow this procedure for all the questions on your form. When you have completed the form, follow these steps:

1. Click the Protect Form button.
2. Go to File | Save As and enter Survey Form in the Filename text box.
3. Select Document Template in the Save As Type: text box.
4. Click the Save button.

To open the survey in Word 2003, open the New Document Task Pane and select On my computer... under Templates. (For Word 2002, open the New Document Task Pane and select General templates... under New from template.) On the General tab, select Survey Form, and click OK. The user can save or print the survey as with any other document.

Microsoft Excel

Let's say you are keeping track of monthly sales figures for the past six months (January through June), and you want to know what the overall sales will likely be for the second half of the year. You can use trendlines to have Excel predict the answers based on your previous data. Follow these steps:

1. Create a bar chart of the data you've tracked so far.
2. Click on your chart, and then click on the data series.
3. Go to Chart | Add Trendline.
4. Click on the Options tab.
5. In the Forecast section, click on the up arrow in the Forecast box until the entry in the box changes to 6.
6. Click OK.

Excel will extend the trendline to show estimated monthly sales figures for the rest of the year.

Microsoft Access

You are sending form letters to all your employees regarding their pension benefits. You need to let them know their exact vesting date, but the Access employee database table does not list that date. The table does, however, list the employees' hire dates. Since you know that employees are vested after 10 years of service, you can quickly add this data to the table by following these steps:

1. Open the Employees database and click on Queries in the database window.
2. Click New, select Design View, and then click OK.
3. Select the Employees table and click Add, and then click Close.
4. Double-click each of the fields in the Employees table to add them to the Field cells.
5. Click the next empty Field: cell and enter the following expression:
   

   Date_vested: DateAdd("yyyy",10,Employees!
   [Hire Date])

When you run the query, it will include a new field, Date_vested, with the specific date for each particular employee. You can use the Make_table option in the Query Design screen to create a new table from this query.

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