Documents, Writing a Letter

To write a letter, starting from Durell’s “Main Menu”…

• Click the “People” button
• Use the search buttons, as required, to select the recipient client
• Click the green “W” button
• Click the “New Doc” button to activate the “Link to Microsoft Word” (see Set-up, File Paths)
• Use the Template drop-down to select the template (e.g. the one called “Letter”)
• Check the “Select records” drop-down is set to “Current record” (change to this, if required)
• Check the “Data field set” drop-down is set to “Standard” (change to this, if required)
• Check the “Include client policy details” tick-box is clear
• Check the “Tick for normal document” tick-box is ticked
• Click the “OK” button to launch the new document

Word should start and load a blank letter pre-populated with your current client’s name, address and salutation (N.B. all as specified by the template called “Letter” – see Templates, New). If it fails to load it will probably be because either (a) you don’t have a copy of Word on the computer, or (b) you haven’t told Durell the correct file-path to Word (i.e. its location – see Set-up, File Paths & Documents, Set-up Word). When Word has finished loading write the body of your letter below the salutation, then to…

Print

• Click the word “File” on the menu line
• Click the menu option for “Print” (if you want to print the letter) followed by the “OK” button

Save

• Click the word “File” on the menu line
• Click the menu option for either “Save” or “Save As”
• Click the “Save” button to save the actual document with the file name as suggested

Exit

• Click the word “File” on the menu line

• Click the menu option for “Exit”

Return To Durell

• After exiting, as above…
• Click the “Yes” button in response to the prompt “Link Word document to….[Client’s name]”
• Click the “Open” button (in the “Find Documents” dialogue) to confirm that the document to be linked is the file displayed (see illustration, below)
• Edit the description for the document to be used in Durell (e.g. from “Letter” to “Letter about pension”)
• Click “OK” to finish

Durell’s Document Descriptions

When you return to Durell, after having clicked the “Open” button to confirm which document you are dealing with, you should edit the description. There is no need to include the client name, ref number or date, as Durell’s Document Viewer will already know these. However you should make the purpose of the letter as clear as possible (e.g. Letter regarding Norwich Union pension review).

Word’s File Names

WARNING! Before returning to Durell, while still in Word, do NOT change the file name allocated to the letter. This will be in the following format…

[Search name] + [Client ref number] + [Template’s name] + [Date]

e.g. [BLOGGS F] + [4252] + [Letter] + [30102002]

Word will store your letters with file names in this format, on your hard drive in the folder specified for them (e.g. “F:\Imw-Data\Docs”, see Set-up, File Paths / Default document directory). Should you wish to, you can also use Microsoft’s Windows Explorer to view the document files in this folder. In this case you could locate all the ones for each client by setting the view to show “Details”, then clicking the word “Name” above the first column. All your document files will then be ordered by client, alphabetically.