Re: [sqr-users] reading a word doc

["Jamie Harris" <JHarris@frederick.edu>]

Noah, 

I tend to agree with the others here - this is extraordinarily
difficult to do all in one program.  

Here's what I'd do if I absolutely had to do it without requiring any
user interaction:

1.  Make a word macro in my template documents that does the mail merge
function (from a specific text file that your SQR creates) automatically
upon startup.
2.  In your SQR, create the file you need to print your letter from and
as the last step use 'call system using' to issue a "start" command (if
your app. server is a Windows environment) to cause Word to open your
document and perform the mail-merge.  "Start" treats it's parameter as
if you double-clicked it, so you'd say 'start c:\templates\letters.doc'
for example and that document would open.

The downside there is that you'll need to install Microsoft Word on
your app. server for this to work.   Also if two people are running the
same letter at once, they'll conflict with each other - no easy way
around that unless you can pass command-line parameters into a Word
macro somehow.   You can ease that a little by making the file name
different for each letter template used (make the text file name the
same as the letter template or something).   If you have Peoplesoft 8.9
you can also set the process up so that only one person can run it at
once - a second person has to wait until the first is done.  That would
help with your concurrency issue too.  

If you don't have Peoplesoft or your app. server runs on some other OS
than Windows this idea won't work at all.  It may not work even if you
do have those environments.  



Seriously, though, it's a lot easier to make a word macro and give it
to the users, they can right-click the file, save it somewhere specific,
run the macro on it, etc.  It's not that much farther away from them
choosing which letter they want and running the SQR.  



-----------------------------------------------------
James Harris
Enterprise Application Analyst/Programmer
Information Technology Division
Frederick Community College 

-----------------------------------------------------

>>> Noah Panayotis <npanayotis@yahoo.com> 1/14/2007 11:16 PM >>>
My compelling reason for not using Word is because we are trying to
create a production program that would generate the letters at run time.
This is not a one time deal.  Based on the users selection criteria,
I'll need to select the specific letter template to generate the letter
add the mailing address info as well as generate a report to be sent
along with the letter. I will need to do all this in one program using
sqr. So you see I really could not use WORD to do what I need to be
done. 
   
  Thanks,
  N.P

George Jansen <GJANSEN@aflcio.org> wrote:
  Do you have a compelling reason not to use the built-in mail merge
feature of Word? It certainly strikes me as the easiest answer.


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