Thanks for the response Cindy.

As this is going to be a controlled application, I can recommed the version
of Word required in order to use this solution.

You are suggesting that I store the content in XML at server end and when I
transfer this XML Internet Explorer will invoke MS-Word to handle the
content? But how can I instruct Word about the mail merge fields? And how do
I get the data back when user finishes editing and Saves it? One of the
requirement is that the editing feature should be available from browser and
user should have a button to save document at server side.

Also, can I use the WordProcessingML for generating mail merged output? Any
link/pointer to help related to this language?

Thanks a lot.
Samir

"Cindy M -WordMVP-" wrote:

Hi ?B?Uy5TYW5naGFuaQ==?=,

What you can do depends on the version of Word available to you. If it's Word
2003, you can save and modify the file as WordProcessingML, Word's XML
vocabulary. The user can open and work with the file as a Word document.

First, I will apologize in case I am posting this in wrong group/section.
The question is related to Ms-Word and Mail Merge functionality but is also
to do with using these features in a web environment.

Here is what I am trying to achieve:

In a web application (.NET platform), I need to provide users with an option
to create template for a letter using their own content/formatting/images and
also use few mail merge fields to include information from a backend DB.

Finally this letter needs to be saved on server and used for generating
letters, using mail merge functionality, as and when requested by user.

After some research and going through some MS-KB articles, I found mechanism
of specifying custom fields for mail merge in a document and also using data
source from remote server to specify the data for mail merge. The articles
also mentions that Word cannot be hosted on a web-page as a control.

I would like suggestion as to what options does .NET and MS-word provides to
achieve the desired functionaltiy? All ideas and suggestions are very much
welcome. I have been trying to find similar posts or anyone who has done
similar thing (I had thought there will be quite a few people who would have
already done this, when I proposed this functionality) without any result so
far.


Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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