Have a look at www.aia-itp.com : They have a merging solotion with it's own macro language inside. Very powerfull!! I have a similar requirement to your's, and in the end decided to go with them.
BTW -> if you are interested in AIA, let them know I refered you: it will score me some points with there marketing dept Alternatively: Inside MS Word, (in word 2002, not earlier) you have events which fire before, during and after mailmerging, and with the macros in Word you can do quite a lot. We have a current solution which uses this. HTH JC Oberholzer www.sdt.co.za -----Original Message----- From: Julian Voelcker [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 4:00 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [ADVANCED-DOTNET] Unanswered - Mail Merging within an application - best approach? OK, I posted this to the Any Questions list a few days back, but haven't had a response so am trying here. I am considering recreating an application as either a desktop or web based solution written in .Net. The application is broken down into two parts, a 'wizard' style facility that gathers data from the user and then a 'mail merge' style module where documents are created by merging the data collected with a template document. The current application has been assembled using a program called HotDocs, but it has got to the point that we no longer feel that this is a flexible enough solution. I am looking at various solutions for the doing the mail merging, concentrating on either writing our own mail merge module or looking at some sort of XML/XSLT solution. I know that there are some MS Word style addins, but none of these seem to have the mail mergeing flexibility that I require. At the moment I am wondering how feasible it would be to store the data in XML format and then use XSLT to do the merging? One of the key issues is that the final documents are legal documents containing multiple clauses and each clause needs to be numbered and is often cross referenced. During the merge process the collected data is checked to determine which clauses are to be included and are assembled, with some clauses including further merging with the collected data. OK, so far I think this would be possible. The tricky bit is that all the assembled clauses (and sub clauses) will have to be renumbered from the top and then any cross references (where there is a reference in one clause to another one) need to be updated. This is something that I am unsure about. Do you think that this is achievable? If not, do you have any alternative suggestions? -- Cheers, Julian Voelcker The Virtual World (UK) Limited Cirencester, United Kingdom =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor(r) http://www.develop.com NEW! ASP.NET courses you may be interested in: 2 Days of ASP.NET, 29 Sept 2003, in Redmond http://www.develop.com/courses/2daspdotnet Guerrilla ASP.NET, 13 Oct 2003, in Boston http://www.develop.com/courses/gaspdotnet View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com The views expressed in this e-mail are, unless otherwise stated, those of the author and not of SDT or its management. The information is confidential and is intended solely for the addressee. All reasonable steps are taken to ensure the accuracy, integrity and confidentiality of information. No liability or responsibility is accepted if information is corrupted or does not reach its intended destination. This email message has been scanned for viruses and cleared. =================================== This list is hosted by DevelopMentor� http://www.develop.com NEW! ASP.NET courses you may be interested in: 2 Days of ASP.NET, 29 Sept 2003, in Redmond http://www.develop.com/courses/2daspdotnet Guerrilla ASP.NET, 13 Oct 2003, in Boston http://www.develop.com/courses/gaspdotnet View archives and manage your subscription(s) at http://discuss.develop.com
