Hi Gerard, It depends on what you want to export.
If it is just a section of the screen display then you can put DP into a windowed (ie not full screen) state with (Alt-Enter), and then from the window's System menu select Edit-Mark and then use the mouse to highlight the rectangle you wish to copy and press Enter. This then sits as plain text in the Windows clipboard. If it is a report then the easiest way is to export the data as text into a file, open the file, select the contents and copy it to the clipboard. Getting data into Word can take many forms. You can do a simple mail merge, using a variety of data export formats from DP, such as Comma separated, Tab Separated. These both have the problem of not being able to take data with embedded CR or LF such as in a DP memo AxAy field as the CR or LF is used as a record delimiter. You can even if you have the appropriate converters installed, use WP Secondary file formats. Mail Merge only enable you to use data in a flat file format, whereas more complex "merges" will have multiple tables (panels) of structured data. For example, an invoice or bill will have a header record, and multiple lines of items making up the invoice. Word Mail Merge will not handle this type of structured data. A far more powerful, but less straight forward way of merging DP data into Word is via XML and XSLT. Word, from Word 2003 onwards. supports XML as a document file type. You can save any Word document as an XML document, and it will retain all the characteristics of the normal .doc format. You can even name the resultant file as a .DOC file and by file association it will be opened by Word and Word will detect it is in an XML format rather than the proprietary Word .Doc format, and open and format it the same way. The XSLT file is the document template, and the XML file (named with a .DOC) extension holds the data exported from DP. With the Dp created XML file you place an instruction to associate it with a particular template file, and when you open the .DOC file it merges the data as thought it were natively part of the document. Unlike the flat file format required for mail merge, you can use highly structured documents, with data from multiple panels. The documents can also use boilerplating techniques which can be controlled from the DP application, so for example you could have conditional paragraphs, or even document sections in separate files and have its inclusion determined in DP, making long complex documents possible. It opens up a vast new world and your imagination is the limit. For example I found that I could place the template file on a web server, and in the DP XML file include the full URL, thereby centralising templates. You do not need to web enable DP for this. If you want to go with DP web enabled, then another world opens up as you can deliver complex documents via the web. You can even merge the XML data and the XSLT template at the server side without even using Word, and then users can use the free Word Viewer to view the "merged" document. All this can be totally transparent to the user, and doesn't require any macros or templates to be distributed For example the following link will download a very simple previously DP created XML file, which has a server based XSLT template assigned to it. http://www.brileigh.net/stuff/DPNEWS.DOC If you open it in Word 2003+ it will probably initially open it as a data only view, however in the XML Task Pane you should see that a DPNews.xsl view is available. Select that to "merge" the data, and look at the print preview (or Print Layout) to see the final document. With web enabling of DP the DPNews.doc could have been dynamically created as a results of user supplied data from their web browser. I posted a message about the techniques and tools needed to get on top of this back in December last year. I can resend it if you wish. Brian -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Gerard van Loenhout Sent: Tuesday, 18 November 2008 4:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Dataperf] Pt4 Example of Merging DP data into MS Word Hi all, I have two questions. -How do I export directly to the Windows clipboard? -Can I export into a simple Word document template? If so, can I get this template from one of you? Regards Gerard van Loenhout _______________________________________________ Dataperf mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf _______________________________________________ Dataperf mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
