R
Ryan
Ok.. here's my situation. I have a program that handles a database full of
people. Users of the program have the ability to send out notifications to
these people. Pretty standard notifications, the program tracks when
notifications are sent out and who sends them. Currently these
notifications are all sent via email.
Now the program users also want the ability to send these notifications via
standard snail mail. (I'll make a popup box come up "Do you want to print
this notification?") I want to allow the users the ability to modify these
notifications as well so that will not have to be done programmatically
if/when notification wording changes. The notifications need to allow for
variables to be insert into the document .. for example, the persons name,
address, salutation, etc. The document needs to have the capability to
print not only the document but a mailing envelope as well so my first
thought as to the document medium is to use Microsoft Word.
Originally my plan was to just have the program save the location (selected
by the user) of a Microsoft Word document. The Word document opens and the
user manually enters the recepient information. This, however, is an
undesirable solution. The users really want the information to be imported
programmatically, somewhat like a Word mail merge (except it only needs to
handle one user at a time). So my next thought is to create a Word document
dynamically every time a user opts for a printable document. Not sure if
this is ideal either because I'm not sure how I'll allow the users to edit
these documents seeing as how they don't exist as a document, I'd probably
save the document body information in a database and allow the users to
modify that. Anyways, just looking for some ideas here. Is there any way
to create a Word document and use variable fields (example: <<First Name>>,
<<Last Name>>, etc.), then have my program open that document and insert the
variable data? Are their any other output solutions (besides Microsoft
Word) I should be looking at?
Thanks for any suggestions,
Ryan
people. Users of the program have the ability to send out notifications to
these people. Pretty standard notifications, the program tracks when
notifications are sent out and who sends them. Currently these
notifications are all sent via email.
Now the program users also want the ability to send these notifications via
standard snail mail. (I'll make a popup box come up "Do you want to print
this notification?") I want to allow the users the ability to modify these
notifications as well so that will not have to be done programmatically
if/when notification wording changes. The notifications need to allow for
variables to be insert into the document .. for example, the persons name,
address, salutation, etc. The document needs to have the capability to
print not only the document but a mailing envelope as well so my first
thought as to the document medium is to use Microsoft Word.
Originally my plan was to just have the program save the location (selected
by the user) of a Microsoft Word document. The Word document opens and the
user manually enters the recepient information. This, however, is an
undesirable solution. The users really want the information to be imported
programmatically, somewhat like a Word mail merge (except it only needs to
handle one user at a time). So my next thought is to create a Word document
dynamically every time a user opts for a printable document. Not sure if
this is ideal either because I'm not sure how I'll allow the users to edit
these documents seeing as how they don't exist as a document, I'd probably
save the document body information in a database and allow the users to
modify that. Anyways, just looking for some ideas here. Is there any way
to create a Word document and use variable fields (example: <<First Name>>,
<<Last Name>>, etc.), then have my program open that document and insert the
variable data? Are their any other output solutions (besides Microsoft
Word) I should be looking at?
Thanks for any suggestions,
Ryan