Hi Brian, Thanks again; I'll give it a try!
Regards, Michael On 21/03/2010 11:38, Brian Hancock wrote: > Hi Michael, > > In essence that's exactly how you create the XML from DP. It really is a > matter of setting a root element to encase the whole document, and then > marking up the various fields as you said. Of course there are many variants > but you have the core idea. > > Word documents can be saved as XML documents, which is just XML but with a > specific vocabulary, ie particular elements and attributes and rules on how > to use them. > > You can make that into an XSLT template, which is where the learning curve > comes in, but for a simple mail merge it is quite easy, and then it is a > matter of opening the XML file and applying a template to it, and the result > document is the merged document. They call the process a transformation, but > for all intents and purpose this is a fancy word for merging. > > Regards > Brian > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] > [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Iannantuoni > Sent: Sunday, 21 March 2010 7:02 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [Dataperf] DataPerfect& MS Word Mail Merge > > Hi Brian, > > Thanks for your advice and link; I have also found your series of > article on "Merging DP Reports into MS Word" from May 2008 and they look > interesting. Am I being naive in thinking I could add some XML codes in > the first page of my existing DP reports and then simply surround other > parts of the reports with appropriate<marker> & </marker> ? > > Michael > > > On 20/03/2010 23:15, Brian Hancock wrote: > >> Hi Michael, >> >> I like to use XML from DP, it gives so much flexibility and DP writes XML >> > so > >> very well. >> >> Unfortunately Word (at least Word 2003 - the latest I have used) does not >> have the ability to directly use XML as a data source (heaven knows why, >> perhaps they think it would put people too much into an open source >> > thinking > >> or something). But there are ways. >> >> Personally I prefer to use XML as the data source and to create a Word >> > XSLT > >> as the form document. You can then start to approach some of the >> > flexibility > >> of WordPerfect's merge using the rich capabilities of XPath and XSLT. In >> September 2008 I posted a series of articles of how to do this, I can post >> them again if you wish to go this way. This has a relatively steep >> > learning > >> curve but the results are great, and you can create Word documents without >> needing Word, which makes it good for server side automation, and web >> enabled DP applications. >> >> Alternatively I found an article which provides a program to perform a >> > merge > >> between a Word Template and a simple XML source. >> http://www.codeguru.com/cpp/i-n/internet/xml/article.php/c3423 Its a very >> simple method. >> >> Another method is to import the XML into Word and then use the resulting >> table as a merge source. >> >> Then of course you could just use a tab delimited or comma delimited file >> and merge directly using that, but my merges have always been too complex >> for that to work well. >> >> Regards >> Brian >> >> >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] >> [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Michael Iannantuoni >> Sent: Saturday, 20 March 2010 9:29 PM >> To: DataPerfect Users Discussion Group >> Subject: [Dataperf] DataPerfect& MS Word Mail Merge >> >> I have a DataPerfect database that is used, for our village magazine, to >> keep track of advertisers, send out renewal reminders, invoices& >> receipts etc by producing, from reports, WordPerfect merge data files >> which are then merged in form letters within WordPerfect X3. >> >> This works fine and has done for many years, however because we are >> moving to another part of the country soon, I have to hand over this >> database to someone else who uses MS Word. Can anyone give me some >> advice and guidance please on how to produce MS Word merge data files >> from DataPerfect reports? >> >> TIA >> >> Michael >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Dataperf mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Dataperf mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf >> >> >> > _______________________________________________ > Dataperf mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf > > _______________________________________________ > Dataperf mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf > > _______________________________________________ Dataperf mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dataperfect.nl/mailman/listinfo/dataperf
