Office Automation in .NET
Hi,
We have a Documentation system which generates some output documents based upon some pre-defined templates in MS Word. What we did in the past was, we designed these templates in Word. We had a Visual Basic dll which dynamically merge the data into these templates using Mail Merge feature.
Now we are enhancing/upgrading this application. I was wondering if we can get rid of this Mail Merge some way because using MS Word on server with COM+ causes many unwanted scenarios, like Word instances remain open and eats memory, Some unwanted data appears in Mail Merge fields and Word opens a pop up etc.
Can anyone suggest something more useful?
Thanks,
Hi,
Can you please clarify why you are considering the templates to be in Word ? Do you require to change them often - and you want a business user to do that ? Why could you not have for instance HTML templates or Crystal reports and drive printing/mailing from the same?
Pranshu
Hi there,
I just can strongly, emphatically recommend you consider the new capabilities of 2007 Office. From the architecture point of view, Microsoft released one week ago a site called Microsoft Office System for Architects
In particular, if you browse the available webcasts, there is one called Generating Office Documents using the New Open XML File Formats
That screencast in 25' shows you how programatically mix data into a word document thru a XML template
It's my feeling, I'm not sure, that in order to see the document in Office 97... Office 2003, you can convert programatically the file to Office 97-2003 format
Hope it helps
Pranshu!
Yes the documents need to be maintained on a regular basis by business users. And these are the documents on some pre-defined print margins forms they have to be in Word.
One other option that we were considering was of using XSL FO. But then we need to have a library of converting these into PDF. Actually our goal is to print these documents from the application.
Thanks,
Hello Nick
I had earlier used tool called ActiveDocs which is very good for the similar purpose. This is based on MS Word templates and maybe you can reuse your template that way. So your investment in templates are not lost.
The website for ActiveDocs is http://www.activedocs.com or http://www.keylogix.com
Regards
Ravi
Well Our existing solution works as well. My point of posting this question was to know what does Microsoft recommends in such scenario and what are users feedback about their solutions. Due to certain conditions we cannot use third party tools in this application for document generation and printing.
Regards.
You should note that Microsoft does not recomend using office automation on the server
"Microsoft does not currently recommend, and does not support, Automation of Microsoft Office applications from any unattended, non-interactive client application or component (including ASP, DCOM, and NT Services), because Office may exhibit unstable behavior and/or deadlock when run in this environment."
(see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757/ for more details)
Arnon
Arnon, you are right and thanks for the link
Still I must remark that where it says "currently", it applies to the released version of Office System
I just want to tell the roadmap and the next version of Office is intended to apply server side capabilities with all the members of the Office family, not just Sharepoint, Project and Exchange
So, Infopath will permit running forms directly from the browser (that is, 0 footprint at the client desktop) while Word, Excel, Visio, Outlook and Powerpoint, among others, will turn into server-side components
I admit the fact that this thread was opened for a current issue, not an issue for the next year. And time is critical in such case. I just want to explain how the Office environment will change since version 12
Days before Atanu Banerjee and Ron Jacobs recorded a very explanatory webcast in that sense:
MSDN Architecture Webcast: Designing Collaborative Business Processes with the 2007 Microsoft Office System (Level 200)
With office 2007 you can use xml to upgrade your documents on the server, with younger versions you can use rtf. It is not that easy but it can be done.
Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification
If you'd like to try ActiveDocs let me know. Send me you contact information.
ActiveDocs is a solution you need to consider.
Ed Kelly
847-707-7380
www.activedocs.com
Can we integrate ActiveDocs from BizTalk 2006 if yes do we need to use any web methods of the service that ActivedOCS PROVIDES
Congratulations - your post has been selected for an ARCast.TV Rapid Response!
To listen to Architect MVP Scott Hanselman and Ron Jacobs address your question click here
Hope this helps,
Ron Jacobs
If it's an option, you might also consider using the new Open XML formats, creating / modifying documents programmatically on the server side, and simply having the clients install the plugin to open edit and save these documents. Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003 all support this format via the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack.
Since the new format stores most of the document (not including assets such as images) in xml, it is very easy to programatically modify the content, and you wouldn't have to deal with actually using MS Word on the server with COM +.
Update: Hmm, after posting I noticed that ron & scott had responded to this already via ARCast. At least they said basically the same thing 
