How to do a mail merge in asp.net without installing word on the server?
any dlls or any components available?
Edits
The template document is already available. im not trying to create a word document. Just want to link the word document with the data.
Thanks
Personally, I would just look at using the System.Net.Mail class and its templating abilities. There is a nice library here: https://github.com/lukencode/FluentEmail which you can pass templates into and send emails that way with the data you require inserted into it.
EDIT: noticed you didn't actually specify whether it was print mailmerge or email, apologies if it is a print mailmerge you are trying to create, but for mass emailing with customized data in it, templating is definitely the way to go.
To accomplish the Word doc creation part of the question there is a previous thread about this: How can a Word document be created in C#?
To send the completed doc check out the System.Net.Mail namespace: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.net.mail.aspx or if you can afford it I have had great experience with http://www.aspnetemail.com/.
We use Aspose.Words to perform mail merges from .net code. It's not cheap but once you get to grips with it it's very powerful.
Edit: I'm assuming you are looking to merge data from some sort of data store into a template word document which can be printed and distributed.
Another option is Docentric Toolkit. It is pure .NET and based on OpenXML without any dependency on MS Word, so it is a good fit for server side report generation.
Merging with data is done through placeholders, which get filled up with data at run time. Data can come from database or XML.
Templates are created in MS Word which needs Docentric Toolkit add-in installed (license is needed).
It is really easy to create templates and to merge them with data from .NET code.
Related
For our SaaS (LAMP) product reporting we are currently using JasperReports. We find it too cumbersome to develop reports with and the output in Word unworkable. Moreover, a couple of customers request to be able to develop simple reports themselves (to be used as mail merge). We would therefore like to develop templates right in Word. The idea is to have an application/webservice that would receive the Word template and JSON data from the LAMP application and return the filled-in report. The report has to support:
Loops inside content (repeating a document section several times while filling in array data)
Filling in tables (populating rows from array)
Filling in chart data in pre-created charts (from array)
This is the functionality we are using in JasperReports right now. Are there existing solutions to this? I've found quite a lot that can substitute simple variables, but no info about the the above three points. Will it be a lot of effort to write one from scratch? I would prefer a Windows OpenXML-based solution rather than a Linux PHPOffice-based one as I presume the former would handle the text split by spell-checker and language tags (though I'm not sure).
Windward and Docmosis are both commercial products that support the features you've listed and they are intended to be added to your application to provide reporting capabilities. Neither is are not OpenXML based. They can use Word documents as templates and perform the data merge into different output formats. Please note I work for Docmosis.
Aspose Words is another tool and it can populate a template but most of the power is through code rather than controls/directives in the template. Given your OpenXML thoughts, perhaps this is more what you are looking for.
More tools are recommended here in StackExchange.
I hope that helps.
ReportBox is a Web based reporting solution that can be used by any software application to generate documents and reports in Microsoft Word/ Excel/ PowerPoint/ HTML(DocX/Xlsx/PPTx/HTML) using OpenXML.
The process starts by building a Microsoft Word/ Excel/ PowerPoint/ HTML document as a template and uploading to ReportBox portal. Your application either sends data to ReportBox or ReportBox can pull data from your application database, which is then merged with the template to produce the finished report. Please note that I work for GreenThoughts.
What would be the best approach to replace placeholders in a .docx document (Word 2010) with data coming from a MySQL database?
Can I just open the file using a server side language and do a string replace per each placeholder?
Is there any existing tool/library available?
Thanks
Disclosure: I work for Invantive.
Using Invantive Composition (http://www.invantive.com/products/invantive-composition) you can fill Word documents (letters, legal pleadings, insurancy policies) with data from a database (IBM DB2, Oracle, MySQL, Teradata and SQL Server) and then fully change the contents at will manually. It is intended for real Microsoft Word end-users (both the guys that make the template and the ones that use it) that access the databases through a central webservice and models with queries. Invantive Composition allows nested repeating groups of data and lay-out. Integrates into Microsoft Word using click once.
In the past, I personally have also been using JasperReports (http://community.jaspersoft.com/project/jasperreports-library) to generate letters using the RTF output target of JasperReports. It is free and works fine as long as you do not want to edit the output more than a few words and have Java/SQL development skills. Just as Invantive Composition it works fine for large numbers of different reports.
As long as you can control the environment completely, you can also consider using RTF as intermediate language (not for end-users, only real developers). Save document as RTF, replace parts of the text you need to be replacable, write a webservice that accepts the parameter and dumps back the resulting RTF. Takes some time to generate more complex tables (tables are obviously something invented by the human race after the RTF specification was written :-) This approach only works with very limited number of templates and when you have sufficient developer time available to get it up and running and stabilized.
As an independent reviewer, I have also seen cases where XML templates were used, but the results were not as good as with JasperReports.
**Disclosure: I lead the docx4j project **
There are heaps of existing tools/libraries available!
Yes, you can just do a string replace, but that is a brittle approach, since Word may have split the string across runs.
You can use MERGEFIELDs, or content control data binding.
docx4j supports all three approaches, but content control data binding is the most powerful.
ContentControlsMergeXML
MERGEFIELDs
VariableReplace
One thing to consider especially is "repeats". If you want say a row of a table in Word, for each matching row in your MySQL table, then you need a way to make this happen.
docx4j does this with a "repeat" content control around the table row; whichever solution you choose, I'd make sure up front that it can handle repeats.
If you want to use PHP the most complete available solution is PHPDocX.
You may check in the tutorial how to substitute placeholder variables by data coming from any data source (like a MySQL DB).
In particular, you may populate table rows with an indefinite number of entries and you may delete whole blocks of the Word document depending on the data fed to the application or build dynamical Word charts.
You may check the available DEMO for a simple but quite illustrative example (its inner workings are explained in the tutorial section).
You can use open Open XML SDK and replace your placeholders like this.
Disclosure: I lead the docxgenjs project
I think you shouldn't have to code everything by yourself, that's why I created a Mustache-like templating engine for docx
Demo:
http://javascript-ninja.fr/docxgenjs/examples/demo.html
Repo
https://github.com/edi9999/docxgenjs
It is JS-based and works client and server side.
Yes, you can use server side language to do it.
Check on apache POI.
http://poi.apache.org
Hello I read the above esp the comments and Ivantive looks impressive - but the solution I needed was much simpler. Use Selection.Range.InsertDatabase in Word to fetch records from an access database or excel spreadsheet or even just another word document. With the access solution you can choose the layout of the records to fetch and have it fetch just particular recordds based on a field (eg ID). Google the words above and it'll take you to MS guidance and an example VB script. Worked well in just a few mins. Now looking for VB script that asks the person what ID they want from the dbase and we're done.
it uses docx templates that have merge fields with java objects (the objects have the information you load from mysql or any other source). The xdoc report is an project for java language, the home page of the project is https://code.google.com/p/xdocreport/.
*Disclosure: I create the templ4docx project *
Hello
You can use templ4docx java library, which is on maven central repository, so you can just add it to your maven dependencies:
<dependency>
<groupId>pl.jsolve</groupId>
<artifactId>templ4docx</artifactId>
<version>2.0.0</version>
</dependency>
Example usage:
Docx docx = new Docx("E:\\template.docx");
Variables variables = new Variables();
variables.addTextVariable(new TextVariable("${firstName}", "John"));
variables.addTextVariable(new TextVariable("${lastName}", "Sky"));
docx.fillTemplate(variables);
docx.save("E:\\filledTemplate.docx");
More details you can find here: http://jsolve.github.io/java/templ4docx/
I am building a website to capture data. I have many spreadsheets that are used for data entry or capture. Now I want to mimic these complex spreadsheets on the web forms but I am unsure of the correct control to use.
Data entry must be allowed and live calculations also need to be made similar to formulas on normal excel spreadsheets. Later on the data must be captured into an SQL table.
What would be the best control to use or method to mimic that functionality, albeit that the spreadsheet component is no longer available in visual studio 2010. Is it a data grid?
Thanks
for custom build you can rely on GridView and keep adding on features to it.
however my reccomendation would be to use Devexpress Grid or some other third party controls and build on it. these controls are more feature rich :)
Here is an extension that contains Excel compatible WinForms. Capturing to SQL should be pretty straightforward using the Entity Framework.
http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/03A0E5A9-4768-461C-9A72-8255A291094C?SRC=Featured
Check to see if the Office Web Components at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Web_Components#Office_Web_Components will meet your needs.
I am looking for a reporting platform for our asp.net application, which will allow the report to be exported in excel (for tabular data), or PDF/Word (for document reports like Invoice prints).
Are there any standard options available?
I tried Rdlc, but it does not seem to help in the second case (at least I dint see a way, if you can please enlighten me :) ).
Currently we are using Interop for excel export (I know its not recommended for asp.net, we are planning to switch soon), use rtf templates for word reports (which also makes them somewhat customizable) and we dont have pdf export (planning to build it). But it seems like a waste of effort if standard controls are already available!
Cheaper the better! Free rocks!!
What's the issue with Rdlc? You can create any kind of format into it. For invoice prints etc you can use list data region. Its used for free flow kind of stuff. Its like ASP.NET repeater. In your case, you will have only one row of data.
Edit: even Crystal reports has equivalent functionality. As said, you will have only one row of data for invoices etc.
In both Crystal & RDLC, you can even supply multiple rows of data to your free flow report and generate multiple invoices in one go. Can be very helpful feature for users.
The purpose is to generate proposal documents that can manually be edited in Word after the fact, but before sending them out to the customers.
Much proposal content would be drawn from existing HTML website content (backing CMS) and also some custom (non-HTML) injection for certain scenarios. Of course the conditional logic could go into server-side ASP.NET to vary the content appropriately.
I'm open to 3rd-party tools if raw manipulation of the Word API is arduous. In fact a good 3rd party tool might be the answer.
Use the Aspose Words component for .Net.
Aspose Words Component Link
The component natively understands the Microsoft Word file format without having to install any Microsoft Office products on your application environment. You can then start from an existing word template or programatically build up an entire Microsoft Word document from scratch. The Word object model then allows you to export to doc / docx etc and save as a native Word file to wherever you required.
They have plenty of demos set up on their website.
I've not used any third-party tools before, as I've only ever written Office automation applications for PCs which already have Office installed.
Creating documents from scratch, or basing them on a template, is quite straightforward. With templates, you can define bookmarks and mail-merge fields to make finding and replacing document elements easier.
Here's a few things that you may find useful:
Named and Optional Arguments
The Word object model is reasonably easy to work with. VB.NET used to be easier to work with than C#: as the Office automation APIs were originally written with VB in mind, you could take advantage of optional parameters. In earlier versions of C#, you had to specify every argument in API calls, which was quite tedious. I understand that this has changed in Visual C# 2010:
How to: Use Named and Optional Arguments in Office Programming (C# Programming Guide)
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264738.aspx
Tutorials
I found these tutorials quite handy:
Automating Office Programs with VB.NET
http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=160433
VB.NET Office Automation FAQ
http://www.xtremevbtalk.com/showthread.php?t=160459
Understanding the Word Object Model from a .NET Developer's Perspective
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa192495%28office.11%29.aspx
Early and Late binding
One point worth mentioning: late-binding is normally recommended against, but it can be very useful if you don't know what version of Office will be deployed on the application's host. Early-binding tends to operate faster, and has the advantage of intellisense in your IDE:
Using early binding and late binding in Automation
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/245115
Early vs. Late Binding
http://word.mvps.org/faqs/interdev/earlyvslatebinding.htm
Search and Replace
One thing to be aware of is that the find and replacement objects may not work as you would expect. Rather than searching the whole document, it searches just the main text. If you have text frames in the document, these will be ignored. Instead, you have to loop through all the StoryRanges, and search the content of each. Here's what I do in VB.NET to search the main text story and text frames:
Private Sub FindReplaceAll(ByVal objDoc As Object, ByVal strFind As String, ByVal strReplacement As String)
Dim rngStory As Object
For Each rngStory In objDoc.StoryRanges
Do
If rngStory.StoryType = wdMainTextStory Or rngStory.StoryType = wdTextFrameStory Then
With rngStory.Find
.Text = strFind
.Replacement.Text = strReplacement
.Wrap = wdFindContinue
.Execute(Replace:=wdReplaceAll)
End With
End If
rngStory = rngStory.NextStoryRange
Loop Until rngStory Is Nothing
Next rngStory
End Sub
StoryRanges Collection Object
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb178940%28office.12%29.aspx
I have a long history regarding document generation and mail merge. In the old days we were using Office COM extensively even in server side (ASP) applications. In years we have learnt that this approach was causing many problems and today I’m always advocating against using Office COM (Word automation) in almost any scenario.
With the Microsoft’s introduction of Open XML SDK we managed to create a solid mail-merge component that was many times faster and much more robust than the solution(s) with Office COM. In my experience Open XML SDK allows a developer to create a solid solution, but it takes a lot of effort and time to make it useful and robust.
There are several good document generation/processing libraries on the market. We later ended up purchasing one and in my opinion creating your own solution (based on Open XML SDK or Office COM) simply never pays off.
Currently we are using Docentric Toolkit which is a general purpose document processing library and even better template-based/mail-merge toolkit for .NET. It allows template design in MS Word and then populating them with application data and producing final documents in different formats.
You can look into using XSL to generate some WordML.
This technique is definitely convoluted but gives you a lot power in your layout.
You don't need any 3rd party controls to create a Word document. From 2007 and onward Word can read html as a word document. You simply save any web page with the ".doc" extension and Word will sort it out.
Simply create your web page with whatever formatting you want then save it with a .doc extension.
I used HttpWebRequestto call the Url (with parmaters) to my page then used WebResponse and Stream to get my page into a buffer, then StreamReader and StreamWriter to save it to an actual document. I've then got my own custom function to download the file.
If anyone wants my code let me know