I really have no idea if I am even asking this in the correct section or even the correct forum. I was just hoping to receive some help with this project I am working on.

Basically I am collecting all of the forms our company has and standardizing them so that all of the offices will use the same form. I have them saved on our server in their own folders (Operations, Clinical, HR, Billing) which all of the offices will be able to access. All i have to do is put them in the scanner and select the "Forms" folder which is on one of our servers and it directly saves it there. Then I can go into the folder from my computer and edit or move around the forms as needed.

I need to create an index for these forms. Basically I need to write something that will format an index the way I want it to be formated. Just a pdf or a word document that people can open up and see:

"Clinical
Patient information form (8/14)
Patient consent form(7/14)

Operations
Fax Cover sheet.(8/27)"

The dates are the day the form was updated.

It would be great if it could have links to the forms within the index but its not necessary.

I don't know if I need a database or where to even begin.

I could just manually create an index but everytime a form was updated or a form was added I would have to open the index up and add it in there. So if I had an index that would go in and sort everything by folder name and then just place the filename of the form then this wouldnt be a problem when I leave this office in a year and someone else adds a form.

If I am in the wrong place could someone please direct me to a place that could help?

Are you just wanting to create a Forms Library index to list available forms? how many forms will you need to keep track of? Will you also need to keep track of filled out forms?

Excel can work for this. If you want to open the form directly from Excel you will need to create a Hyper link to each form or use Visual Basic to create a procedure to open the form. I've done this where I include the file name in each row (record) and check the last 3 chars of the file for the extension. Then open word, excel, or pdf depending on the Extension of the file.

thanks for the info bill... sorry for the super late response guys but can anyone tell me how to go about in excel to do this? it will be 100-200 forms. I know thats a broad range but its the best estimate I can give right now. I want an index that will auto update when a new form is added to the folder.

javed

i've attached a list that this program called Mihov Index maker created. It links to the files. The headings for each group are sadly is the path instead of the folder title which is kind of annoying. I can always go in and change those. I guess when I leave people will just have to manually add and subtract from this list.