Need Office Application Recommendations

[skaz]

I need some recommendations on what applications I should use within the office suite for what I'm trying to accomplish. I would say I have an above average understanding of Microsoft office, in case that helps with your recommendations.

My goal: to be able to enter data such as room sizes and have it automatically calculate wall and ceiling dimensions and then put this information into a written paragraph.

Example: I'll give you an example of what I would write for a quick bid summary and ultimately what I need the information to output to, "This line item includes painting 2 coats, using kilz paint, on approximately 1136 Sq Ft of wall area. Rooms with walls to be painted include the living room (15x15x8), first floor hallway (15x4x8), and second floor bedroom (10x12x8)."

So the paragraph template would look something like, "This line item includes painting 2 coats, using kilz paint, on approximately ((BLANK)) of wall area. Rooms with walls to be painted include the ((BLANK))((BLANK))."

I'm not quite sure how I would go about doing this, but I feel like this is something I could use office for to accomplish. Maybe use excel to input the room data and then have it somehow output it's calculations to a template paragraph I create. I'm not sure though on what the best way to do this would be so I thought I'd reach out for help. I appreciate any recommendations or advice you can offer me. Thank you!

 

[USAFRet]

Visio + Excel can do a lot of the calc.
But to output that into a written paragraph.... "This line item includes painting 2 coats, using kilz paint, on approximately ((BLANK)) of wall area. Rooms with walls to be painted include the ((BLANK))((BLANK))."

...will be problematic.

The ((BLANK))((BLANK)) could be merge fields in a Word file, read from Visio or Excel, but there is probably some paid solution that already does this.

 

[JeckeL]

The simplest way I can think of would be to write a bit of java where you input the amounts, the calculations are done behind the scenes, and java outputs the desired text to a .txt file which can be opened in word, wordpad, etc