MS Word correspondence templates

Correspondence template design also supports designing templates in either Microsoft Word or the existing HTML editor. For correspondence templates in Microsoft Word (docx) format, the ‘Letter contents’ option will be replaced with a ‘Upload letter template’ option. This supports the uploading of docx format documents. Click on the ‘Upload letter template’ option to browse the file system and select the required docx format template.

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Once uploaded, a new option will appear as per below. You will then always be able to download the template uploaded/being used and amend it, and then re-upload.

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Which format to use for correspondence templates?

We recommend that email templates, simple letters templates, and any correspondence template not requiring complex formatting, are continued to be designed using the embedded HTML Editor which is quick and easy to use.

If exact, complex formatting is required for large documents such as tables, text boxes, table of contents etc, we recommend the use of the Microsoft Word template editor.

Designing MS Word templates

The template design should be performed outside of the system, before uploading to iCasework. Below are some instructions for using this format.

The available merge items for the HTML editor are also available for the MS Word template editor. When using merge items, you should wrap the text in square brackets and then add a comment containing the merge item (comment to be around the brackets). We recommend replacing text to be merged with consistent naming conventions so you can easily know what it is when scanning the document, for example, the original document will say ‘Dear Mr Jamie Smith’ and it is replaced with ‘Dear [Recipient name]’ so that it can be merged without confusion of having the name there.

We do recommend using the font format tags to correctly format the inserted data when the correspondence template is generated on a case (i.e. font and fontsize).

You should also ensure the setting to replace ‘straight’ quotes with ‘smart’ quotes is off as this could cause the merge item to not work. Word (office in General) has a slightly irritating auto correct feature.  It replaces ‘straight’ quotes with ‘smart’ quotes.  See the merge items below with straight quotes and without:

SOURCE=“CASE WORKER” ATTRIBUTE=“Name”

SOURCE="CASE WORKER" ATTRIBUTE="Name"

 You can turn off the auto correct here: ‘Word | File | Options, Then Proofing | Auto Correct Options’:

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Make sure the ‘Straight Quotes’ with smart quotes is unchecked (ideally before you start adding comments with merge items):

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If you download a template from the system and you would like to amend a merge item that another user has added in a comment, you will need to copy it, delete it, and add a new comment, as you cannot edit other users comments.

Any ‘Page setup’ options (margins, headers, footers) in iCasework will be ignored. Please set all margins, headers and footers within the docx document.

Correspondence paragraphs are supported but must contain static content only and not contain merge items themselves.

Example correspondence template design with merge items:

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Restrict editing of document regions

A further advantage of utilising correspondence templates in MS Word is that the template could protect certain document regions from being edited by end users.