Creating Automatically Numbered Certificates

Question

Creating Automatically Numbered Certificates

Anonymous

Hello

I'm trying to figure out how to quickly create certificates that are automatically sequentially numbered. There are two certificates per page, each certificate has 2 instances of its number, and each of the two certificates on a page have slightly different visual designs. Below is a very rough mock-up of the document I'm trying to create.

Ideally, I want to be able to quickly and easily print out as many pages of these as necessary with the numbers incrementing sequentially and the next time we go to make more, it'll pick up where we left off.

The employee that used to handle this process left under very bad terms, so we don't have access to a digital version of the original document, just a high quality scan of an example certificate. So I'd like to use that scan as a background image and put the numbers in the corresponding locations as precisely as possible. The actual design is much more complicated than the mock-up and would be difficult to reproduce.

I tried using sequence fields, and to get them to automatically replicate across many pages I put them in the header/footer, but apparently sequence fields don't work outside of the main document. So that didn't work. I don't know how else to have the numbers automatically populate when I make a new page.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. If you have a method that would use Excel instead, that would be fine too.

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3 answers

Answer 1

You could use a simple formula field like:

{={PAGE}+1000}

but, to make that more flexible, you could put a SET and FILLIN field combination in the page header or footer, coded like:

{SET StartNum{={FILLIN "What is the starting number"}-1}}

then code the formula field as:

{={PAGE}+StartNum}

All you need do then to update the numbers is press F9 to get the start # prompt and update the numbers in the document body.

The only thing this approach won't do yet is remember the last-used number; it will remember the last use starting number, though. To have the number auto-increment, using a field in the page header or footer coded like:

{SET StartNum{={FILLIN "What is the starting number" \d {={NUMPAGES}+StartNum+1}}-1}}

No macros required. Simply replicate the required number of pages before doing the Ctrl-A, F9.

Note: The field brace pairs (i.e. '{ }') for the above example are all created in the document itself, via Ctrl-F9 (Cmd-F9 on a Mac or, if you’re using a laptop, you might need to use Ctrl-Fn-F9); you can't simply type them or copy & paste them from this message. Nor is it practical to add them via any of the standard Word dialogues. The spaces represented in the field constructions are all required.

For macro you could use as a once-off to convert the above text representations of the field codes into working field codes, , see Convert Text Representations of Fields to Working Fields in the Mailmerge Tips and Tricks page at: https://www.msofficeforums.com/mail-merge/21803-mailmerge-tips-tricks.html

Answer 2

Here are some ideas:

Creating sequentially numbered documents (such as invoices)
https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/MacrosVBA/NumberDocs.htm
http://www.gmayor.com/automatic_numbering_documents.htm

Sequentially numbering multiple copies of single document using a macro
https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/MacrosVBA/NumberCopiesOf1Doc.htm

Sequentially numbering multiple copies of single document using a mail merge
https://wordmvp.com/FAQs/MailMerge/NumberCopiesOfDocMMerge.htm

Answer 3

I was really hoping there was going to be a simpler solution and I wouldn't need to code up a macro, but after reading through those resources that's what I ended up doing.

Specifically, what I did was:

Set up rich text content controls in the main document for all 4 numbers with the appropriate font and format
Create a table to precisely align each number to the exact position needed (this was significantly more finicky and annoying than I expected, I probably should have used shapes instead)
Slightly modify a macro from one of your links to duplicate pages as many times as necessary (the macro simply copies the first page and pastes it X number of times)
Code a macro that iterates through the list of all content controls and sets the number sequence from the appropriate starting point determined by either message box input or pulling from a text file
Combine both macros together and have it write the last number used to the text file

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Creating Automatically Numbered Certificates

3 answers