This document outlines a 5-step process for automating proposals using Microsoft Excel and Word: 1) Set up field names in an Excel sheet, 2) Prepare proposals in Word by inserting the field names, 3) Save the prepared proposals in a shared folder, 4) Enter field values in the Excel sheet, 5) Select and populate a proposal by clicking buttons to insert the field values from Excel. Additional tools are included for navigating between fields and creating drop-down lists for repeated values.

1. Step 1 – Set up your field names
• In the Excel workbook provided click “Create Proposal Field Sheet”.
• Set-up unlimited list of field names in column A.
Automated Proposals in 5 easy steps
Set Price of $750

2. Step 2 – Prepare your Proposals for Conversion
• Save the document into a defined folder path for documents to convert which is
“C:Documents to Convert”.
• These field names can be copied and pasted any number of times throughout the
proposal and also be in headers and footers. You can use also use search and
replace for this process.
• Open your Microsoft Word proposal and
enter or replace text throughout the
document matching exactly your field
names.

3. Step 3 – Save Prepared Proposal(s)
• If you have multiple proposals you repeat step 2 to set up and save any number of
documents into the defined folder path C:Documents to Convert.
• Not all proposals need to have all the fields in them. Consider the list of fields in
Excel the master list of all possible fields and each proposal might just have a
subset of the fields.
• The code will just replace the matching text with fields that it finds and ignore
fields that are not used in that proposal.

4. Step 4 – Enter Your Field Values
• Open your Excel workbook and enter text, calculations or links to other cells into
the Field Value column (B).
• When done click the “Populate Proposal” button. This will bring up a file/open
dialog box.
• Navigate to the proposal to populate and click open.

5. Step 5 – Create and Populate Proposal
• Click the “Select Doc to Populate” button which will display a file/open dialog box.
• Navigate to the proposal to populate and click open.
• The resulting document will be populated with your field values and ready to be
saved and sent to the client.
• Need to make changes? Just change the values in column B and regenerate a new
proposal with a single button click.

6. Other Tools Provided
• Since some proposals have many fields I included the “Go to Field” button.
This displays a dialog box with a list of all field names, click the name and
the code takes you to that row for easy access.
• Create Drop-Down – select a range of text to be included in a drop-down
menu for frequently repeated items like state names, employees, etc. The
code will create a cell with a drop-down of those items which you can cut
and paste into the building block values column B where appropriate