Requesting advice on how to do this

Post #260,378 by lincoln 6/29/06 10:40:44 AM Reply	Requesting advice on how to do this Our customers have blank project request forms that they fill out and fax to us, listing all pertinent information that we need to analyze the request and bill accordingly. My boss wanted this to become web enabled, and that's what I've been doing the past few weeks - creating replicas of these forms in ASP.Net using VB.net as the code behind to support these pages. Now he wants the customers to fill out the screens online and have my program retrieve the Word documents from the server, somehow take the fields from the screen and put them into the Word doc in the right places, then programatically email the completed doc to a programmer to evaluate and price out the project. I know that VB.Net can retrieve Word docs and do the email without involving Outlook, but after reading the books I have here in the office and the onlive help in Visual Studio, they don't say HOW to do insert data into the right places in the Word doc. So I'm looking for suggestions from the community. One way is to involve Crystal Reports in the code, but I haven't used it combined with VB before - is that going to be a small or large headache? Are there better options compared to using Crystal? (And are any of them free?) TIA. lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me]
Post #260,391 by boxley 6/29/06 11:15:32 AM Reply	make word template, save as html doc use the functions that lock the doc except for edittable fields, place a vb send/finish button on the bottom that saves this edited doc uniquely and emails same to programmer. HTH thanx, bill Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 50 years. meep
Post #260,393 by SpiceWare 6/29/06 11:19:41 AM Reply	Re: Requesting advice on how to do this I have collection letters program that dumps data into a word document using Find & Replace. In the form letter are place holders for the data, such as <CUSTOMER_INFO> <LATE_INVOICES> and so on. Also within the form letter are 2 macros: Sub FindReplace(pFind As String, pReplace As String)\n Selection.Find.ClearFormatting\n Selection.Find.Replacement.ClearFormatting\n With Selection.Find\n .Text = pFind\n .Replacement.Text = pReplace\n .Forward = True\n .Wrap = wdFindContinue\n .Format = False\n .MatchCase = False\n .MatchWholeWord = False\n .MatchWildcards = False\n .MatchSoundsLike = False\n .MatchAllWordForms = False\n End With\n Selection.Find.Execute Replace:=wdReplaceAll\nEnd Sub\n\n\nSub Find(pFind As String)\n Selection.Find.ClearFormatting\n With Selection.Find\n .Text = pFind\n .Replacement.Text = ""\n .Forward = True\n .Wrap = wdFindContinue\n .Format = False\n .MatchCase = False\n .MatchWholeWord = False\n .MatchWildcards = False\n .MatchSoundsLike = False\n .MatchAllWordForms = False\n End With\n Selection.Find.Execute\nEnd Sub In a VB program I get the data from Oracle then use the macros as follows: \n Public gApp As Word.Application\n Dim wDoc As Word.Document\n\n Set gApp = New Word.Application\n Set wDoc = gApp.Documents.Open(OriginalLetter, , True)\n\n Call gApp.Run("FindReplace", "<DATE>", Format(Date, "Long Date"))\n\n Call gApp.Run("Find", "<CUSTOMER_INFO>")\n gApp.Selection.TypeText Address(pCust, pLoc)\n \n Call gApp.Run("FindReplace", "<ACCOUNT_REP>", AccountRep("1", pCust, pLoc))\n Call gApp.Run("Find", "<LATE_INVOICES>")\n \n gApp.Selection.PageSetup.LeftMargin = InchesToPoints(1)\n gApp.Selection.PageSetup.RightMargin = InchesToPoints(1)\n\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(0.2), wdAlignTabLeft\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(0.9), wdAlignTabLeft\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(1.7), wdAlignTabLeft\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(3.2), wdAlignTabLeft\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(4.6), wdAlignTabRight\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(5.6), wdAlignTabRight\n gApp.Selection.ParagraphFormat.TabStops.Add InchesToPoints(6.5), wdAlignTabRight\n\n ... loop to read data and use gApp.Selection.TypeText to add list of late invoices\n\n wDoc.SaveAs NewLetter, 100 ' 100 = Word 97-2003 & 6.0/95 format\n wDoc.Close Darrell Spice, Jr. Trendy yet complex\nPeople seek me out - though they're not sure why\n[link\|http://spiceware.org/gallery/ArtisticOverpass\|Artistic Overpass] [link\|http://www.spiceware.org/\|SpiceWare]
Post #260,448 by lincoln 6/29/06 5:11:32 PM 6/29/06 5:15:17 PM Reply	Tried it & got a security error On the statement "Set gApp = New Word.Application" I get the following: =========================================================================== Access is denied. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.UnauthorizedAccessException: Access is denied. ASP.NET is not authorized to access the requested resource. Consider granting access rights to the resource to the ASP.NET request identity. ASP.NET has a base process identity (typically {MACHINE}\\ASPNET on IIS 5 or Network Service on IIS 6) that is used if the application is not impersonating. If the application is impersonating via <identity impersonate="true"/>, the identity will be the anonymous user (typically IUSR_MACHINENAME) or the authenticated request user. To grant ASP.NET write access to a file, right-click the file in Explorer, choose "Properties" and select the Security tab. Click "Add" to add the appropriate user or group. Highlight the ASP.NET account, and check the boxes for the desired access. =========================================================================== Right clicking on Winword.exe and going to the security tab, I've given full rights to Anonymous, Guest, <system>\\Aspnet and Internet Guest Account. I don't have a 'IUSR_MACHINENAME' logon available, even when going to Add User -> Advanced -> Find Now. I have no way of knowing exactly what 'user' the program is using in its attempt to fire up Word, so I can't create the user locally to make the program happy. Nor does the VB.Net code allow me to specify a user in the Word object creation statement. lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me] Edited by lincoln June 29, 2006, 05:15:17 PM EDT Expand All History
Post #260,479 by altmann 6/30/06 4:22:51 AM Reply	Don't do it man! Don't do it! This is an [link\|http://support.microsoft.com/kb/q257757/\|old article], but I think it still applies and gives a hint of a likely cause of your error message: User Identity: Office Applications assume a user identity when they are run, even when they are started by Automation. They attempt to initialize toolbars, menus, options, printers, and some add-ins based on settings in the user registry hive for the user who launches the application. Many services run under accounts that have no user profiles (such as the SYSTEM or IWAM_[servername] accounts), and therefore Office may fail to initialize properly on startup, returning an error on CreateObject or CoCreateInstance. Even if the Office application can be started, without a user profile other functions may fail to work properly. If you plan to Automate Office from a service, you need to configure either your code or Office so that it will run with a loaded user profile. I'd try to find a 3rd party library that can write into Word or RTF files, or if you can limit your support to Word 2003, look into WordML. -- Chris Altmann
Post #260,483 by lincoln 6/30/06 9:44:41 AM Reply	So should I try the Crystal Reports option? I've never used CR within a program. Do I create a screen that brings up a copy of the report, let the user fill it in, and then email/print it? What's your recommendation? lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me]
Post #260,502 by altmann 6/30/06 2:21:21 PM Reply	Sure You should be able to generate it server side. Here's an example that generates a PDF and returns it to the web user. [link\|http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/crystlmn/html/crtskexportingwebbasedreports.asp\|http://msdn.microsof...bbasedreports.asp] You would of course generate a Word doc and send it via email. PS: Note that I haven't actually done this, but I might someday, so I looked into it. -- Chris Altmann
Post #260,491 by broomberg 6/30/06 11:31:00 AM Reply	This may help you If you code for windows automation and you need a process that launches other programs and controls them, this is a good start: [link\|http://www.firedaemon.com/\|http://www.firedaemon.com/] I use it for running my perl based automation stuff, which picks up control files and then executes windows programs.
Post #260,885 by lincoln 7/6/06 11:59:10 AM Reply	My solution I knew that VB has been able to utilize a mail object pre .Net days, so I dug into the poorly designed online help and spent hours searching to find the answer. By importing the System.Web.Mail.SmtpMail namespace, I was able to write a procedure to build the form as text and email it to myself. Now that I proved it would work, I fired up Frontpage, designed the form, then copied the HTML code and inserted it into my program's code. By emailing myself the form as an HTML-based message, it displays beautifully in Outlook. (Okay, it just doesn't print so beautifully...!) But it came out looking good enough to make the VP happy, and that's what counts. lincoln "Chicago to my mind was the only place to be. ... I above all liked the city because it was filled with people all a-bustle, and the clatter of hooves and carriages, and with delivery wagons and drays and peddlers and the boom and clank of freight trains. And when those black clouds came sailing in from the west, pouring thunderstorms upon us so that you couldn't hear the cries or curses of humankind, I liked that best of all. Chicago could stand up to the worst God had to offer. I understood why it was built--a place for trade, of course, with railroads and ships and so on, but mostly to give all of us a magnitude of defiance that is not provided by one house on the plains. And the plains is where those storms come from." -- E.L. Doctorow Never apply a Star Trek solution to a Babylon 5 problem. I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a *Citizen* of the United States. [link\|mailto:bconnors@ev1.net\|contact me]

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