Narrative report writer shareware for commercial reports

[Michael P Jacobs MAI]

The basic software report writer renewal is a little steep this year (like everything else), and I just dusted off some VBA from an old narrative report writer I wrote with a programmer 20+ years ago. It still works! All it does is quickly move Excel variables (like prices, cap rates, etc.) and tables/charts to Word. Can I get a count of how many would be interested in something like that on a shareware basis? If there are enough of us I could figure out the annual cost and let you know OR, if you have some VBA experience and want a small annuity, here you go. Each appraisal office would "BYOT" (bring your own template), but it's easy enough to plant the variables and tables in Word to replace your current boilerplate. There would be no actual narrative document, no tech support, no help line... just click the button to merge excel to word. It works exactly like Narrative1's basic merge. I'm thinking 25 of us could keep the annual cost under $300/year without the extraordinary inflation.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I actually have "mini-spreadsheet" tables embedded into Word Perfect, something Word does not do. The WP table functions are able to do fairly complex formula unlike anything I found in Word. So, my templates are the culmination of 30 years tinkering with WP. I can think my ex for being a WP pro and teacher. She was teaching adult classes in WP, DOS, Database, and Lotus 123. Word tried to wipe them all out but WP still has a small following and I'd use Libreoffice before Word personally.

 

[Michael P Jacobs MAI]

I actually have "mini-spreadsheet" tables embedded into Word Perfect, something Word does not do. The WP table functions are able to do fairly complex formula unlike anything I found in Word. So, my templates are the culmination of 30 years tinkering with WP. I can think my ex for being a WP pro and teacher. She was teaching adult classes in WP, DOS, Database, and Lotus 123. Word tried to wipe them all out but WP still has a small following and I'd use Libreoffice before Word personally.

I have heard that WordPerfect is ahead of Word in this regard.

 

[Scott.A]

I had no idea Word Perfect was still around.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I had no idea Word Perfect was still around.

It is still around because it is better than Word.
Legal documents are still created by WP as many lawyers prefer WP for pleadings etc.

 

[Ricky LaFleur]

Pretty sure I have a floppy disk somewhere with a Word Perfect copy on it. Now, to dig out an old PC that can read floppies...

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

I had 4.1,m 5.2, 6.0DOS 6.1WIN, X4, X5, X7 and they have more... But I use 4,5,7 and cannot tell them apart.

 

[Artemis Fowl]

Lotus 1-2-3


A good Word template works great. Most Excel wizardry can be accomplished with a few trips to the Google for solutions.

 

[RichMahagony]

The basic software report writer renewal is a little steep this year (like everything else), and I just dusted off some VBA from an old narrative report writer I wrote with a programmer 20+ years ago. It still works! All it does is quickly move Excel variables (like prices, cap rates, etc.) and tables/charts to Word. Can I get a count of how many would be interested in something like that on a shareware basis? If there are enough of us I could figure out the annual cost and let you know OR, if you have some VBA experience and want a small annuity, here you go. Each appraisal office would "BYOT" (bring your own template), but it's easy enough to plant the variables and tables in Word to replace your current boilerplate. There would be no actual narrative document, no tech support, no help line... just click the button to merge excel to word. It works exactly like Narrative1's basic merge. I'm thinking 25 of us could keep the annual cost under $300/year without the extraordinary inflation.

Sounds alot like Edge. Punch the data into Excel and merge it into Word. We do that and it costs way more than you are suggesting. Sounds interesting to me.

 

[andrew81]

Don't know if it will do exactly what you are looking for, but, LibreOffice is a free office suite that can read excel and word documents.