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TheFormTool

By Your Dollar Matters Free to try Editors' Rating

Editors' Review

Download.com Staff Feb 27, 2012

TheFormTool is a free add-on for Microsoft Word. With it, users can create attractive, personalized, professional forms and documents inside Word, using regular Word commands. It also adds many unique capabilities, such as the ability reuse old files as new forms. It's particularly useful to physicians, attorneys, engineers, administrators, and self-employed people--anyone who needs to create clear, legible, archival-quality forms, documents, letters, and records. It's a simplified version of a complex (and expensive) pro tool, but TheFormTool is fully functional and completely free, with no expiration date. TheFormTool requires Microsoft Word 2007 or better, though it's compatible with most documents created in earlier versions. We tried it in Word Version 14 in Office 2010.

We clicked the extracted executable file to open TheFormTool inside Word. The program's quick-start guide includes instructions to enable editing and other setup measures. We highly recommend reviewing the PDF-based quick start guide included in TheFormTool's download. Following the guide, we started by creating a new, blank form with signature and date of birth fields. From TheFormTool's tab, we added a Q&A Table, with entries asking for the name and birth date of the signer. Next we placed our cursor on the document at the exact space we wanted the signature field, and clicked Field. A simple wizard let us add the field in various forms using the Fields, Lists, and Conditions tool. We could edit our headers and make other changes. When we were ready, we clicked Insert Field, and TheFormTool created our signature and DOB fields. Saving the form let us use it as a template as often as we needed, either by entering data and clicking Fill or by editing and modifying it to create new or updated forms. TheFormTool works equally well with forms saved as documents (.docx) or templates (.dotx) but we recommend using the template format since it creates a new document each time, making it impossible for a user to accidently modify the original form.

That's just the start of TheFormTool's capabilities. It's one of the most capable Word add-ins we've tried, and one that adds the most to Word's already considerable capabilities.

Full Specifications

What's new in version 2.0

Version 2.0 includes the following improvements: Up to five bug fixes and seven improved features. The PRO version adds two dozen math functions

General

Date Added April 22, 2012
Version 2.0

Operating Systems

Additional Requirements Microsoft Word 2007

Popularity

Total Downloads 2,682
Downloads Last Week 2
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Developer's Description

You'll notice that this free version of TheFormTool is unusual. Unlike most offers of "free" software, TheFormTool has no expiration date and no trial period. It's yours to use as long as you like, completely free. In return, please tell your friends and colleagues how pleased you become with it. TheFormTool enables attorneys, accountants, doctors, administrators and managers, anyone who deals in information, to leverage their expertise by making their otherwise ordinary documents brilliant. Create beautiful, accurate and completely personalized documents up to 90% faster than before while avoiding the costs of data re-entry or error-prone "cut and paste" document creation. TheFormTool simplifies and automates document production while empowering even the inexperienced to "get it right" the first time. TheFormTool handles rep and engagement letters and fee agreements with ease. Leases, wills and intake forms are a snap. Patient histories and insurance claims, audit checklists and control questionnaires, interview reports and personnel items can all be accomplished in a flash and error free. Bids, quotations and service orders in a blink. For any document needing personalization every time, TheFormTool will reduce staff time, effort and stress while increasing accuracy.

If the user can answer simple questions, he or she can complete documents quickly, easily and accurately. For final review, edit and approval, the finished document includes a review page showing all of the variables. No more hunting for changes "hidden somewhere" in a document or wondering where a name is misspelled even once. Best of all, TheFormTool's learning curve is lightning fast. Because TheFormTool uses standard WORD commands, you can be "smartening" your documents less than 10 minutes after downloading it. Users require no special training; just two clicks and they're on their way.

For even more power and usefulness, consider purchasing TheFormTool PRO, on sale now for just $89, more than 60% off its $225 list price. In addition to all the features of the basic version, TheFormTool PRO easily manages complex gender and verb agreement, pronouns and plurals, capitalization, forms of numbers and dates, lists and complex relationships within or between lists and roles within and between documents. TheFormTool PRO allows limited, unlimited or yes/no input choices, master lists across matters, conditional entries, customized field formats and forward and reverse date precedents.
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