VB 2003 and - Eeek! - DDE

[Phill. W]

Some of my Users have grown up (/literally/ in some cases) with
the ability to "Copy" a textbox from VB [6 and earlier] applications,
pop across to their favourite MS Word document and "Paste Link"
a field into said document that updates itself as and when the
application's data changes.

Good News : This is all underpinned by DDE, which was /natively/
supported up to VB6. .

Bad News : DDE is not longer supported in Visual Basic (at least
not in VB'2003).

What, if anything, can I /replace/ this functionality with (from the
users' perspective?
Am I going to have to start intercepting WM_DDE_* messages
and trying to /re-invent/ a thirteen-year-old (and, apparently,
obsolete) wheel?

TIA,
Phill W.

 

[Brian Gideon]

Phill,

Must they be able to make the link in Word or will Excel be acceptable?
In Excel you can use a real-time data server (RTD).

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnexcl2k2/html/odc_xlrtdvbnet.asp>

Brian

 

[Phill. W]

Brian,

Sadly, they want to use this with Word - it's just a quick and easy
way of creating letters based on addresses and other data from
our applications. At least it used to be ;-)

Regards,
Phill W.

Phill,

Must they be able to make the link in Word or will Excel be acceptable?
In Excel you can use a real-time data server (RTD).

<http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnexcl2k2/
html/odc_xlrtdvbnet.asp>

Brian

Some of my Users have grown up (/literally/ in some cases) with
the ability to "Copy" a textbox from VB [6 and earlier] applications,
pop across to their favourite MS Word document and "Paste Link"
a field into said document that updates itself as and when the
application's data changes.

Good News : This is all underpinned by DDE, which was /natively/
supported up to VB6. .

Bad News : DDE is not longer supported in Visual Basic (at least
not in VB'2003).

What, if anything, can I /replace/ this functionality with (from the
users' perspective?
Am I going to have to start intercepting WM_DDE_* messages
and trying to /re-invent/ a thirteen-year-old (and, apparently,
obsolete) wheel?

TIA,
Phill W.