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preserving formatting on copy/paste into Peoplesoft database
Hello,
I realize I am working within an architecture that will immediately be identified as less than ideal, but it is the one that I am stuck with. Here is the general outline of my problem. I work for a University which uses Peoplesoft 8 to store and manage student data. We would like to give prospective students the option to submit their application essays online, but so far we have not been able to implement a solution which allows us to retain formatting when we retrieve the document for printing. This is a dealbreaker, since it is imperative that students essays (we cannot realistically control what application they are created in, nor how the prospect works within that application in order to format text), be accurately represented when they are retrieved for review by our admissions board. Under our current setup, it is no surprise that we lose formatiing. The test environment uses a delivered peoplesoft interface to accept copy/pasted text from word and then inserts it using a native Peoplesoft function. When we retrieve the record and try to print it (again, all from within Peoplesoft) we lost paragraph breaks and line endings, to say the least. The task is to create a web form which can massage the data (or accept it via another method than copy/paste) and trigger an SQL insert into the same table that Peoplesoft hooks to normally. The SQL part is not that hard. It is getting the formatting to carry over. I have read a little that perhaps saving the Word doc as .rtf prior to cutting and pasting may help, but I assume there are better ways. If it were up to me (it's not), I would rather not be trying to store the docs in the db at all, but writing them to a directory and storing a reference to the file in the db, so that all we were doing was moving docs around without having to worry about conversion (this would also help deal with the fact that although 90% of input will come from Word, not all will), but for reasons too tedious to go into here, this is not an option. We are also tied to classic .asp on the web app end. Given all of that, does anyone have any idea if this can even be accomplished with any degree of consistency. I have been doing web app development for about six years, and have had to deal with Word formatting issues over and over, but this is slightly different, as I can massage the data prior to input using .asp or vb, but I am tied to retrieving it via SQR and Peoplesoft. I am extremely curious to know whether or not anyone thinks this is possible. Thanks for reading. |
#2
Posted to microsoft.public.word.pagelayout
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preserving formatting on copy/paste into Peoplesoft database
Unless your Admissions Board wants to review the document to determine the
way in which applicant went about formatting it, I would suggest that you should be getting the documents submitted in .pdf format. Free PDF creation programs (PrimoPDF is one) are available, so noone should be disadvantaged by that being a requirement if you indicated to them what they can use for the conversion to PDF -- Hope this helps. Please reply to the newsgroup unless you wish to avail yourself of my services on a paid consulting basis. Doug Robbins - Word MVP "Ed" wrote in message ... Hello, I realize I am working within an architecture that will immediately be identified as less than ideal, but it is the one that I am stuck with. Here is the general outline of my problem. I work for a University which uses Peoplesoft 8 to store and manage student data. We would like to give prospective students the option to submit their application essays online, but so far we have not been able to implement a solution which allows us to retain formatting when we retrieve the document for printing. This is a dealbreaker, since it is imperative that students essays (we cannot realistically control what application they are created in, nor how the prospect works within that application in order to format text), be accurately represented when they are retrieved for review by our admissions board. Under our current setup, it is no surprise that we lose formatiing. The test environment uses a delivered peoplesoft interface to accept copy/pasted text from word and then inserts it using a native Peoplesoft function. When we retrieve the record and try to print it (again, all from within Peoplesoft) we lost paragraph breaks and line endings, to say the least. The task is to create a web form which can massage the data (or accept it via another method than copy/paste) and trigger an SQL insert into the same table that Peoplesoft hooks to normally. The SQL part is not that hard. It is getting the formatting to carry over. I have read a little that perhaps saving the Word doc as .rtf prior to cutting and pasting may help, but I assume there are better ways. If it were up to me (it's not), I would rather not be trying to store the docs in the db at all, but writing them to a directory and storing a reference to the file in the db, so that all we were doing was moving docs around without having to worry about conversion (this would also help deal with the fact that although 90% of input will come from Word, not all will), but for reasons too tedious to go into here, this is not an option. We are also tied to classic .asp on the web app end. Given all of that, does anyone have any idea if this can even be accomplished with any degree of consistency. I have been doing web app development for about six years, and have had to deal with Word formatting issues over and over, but this is slightly different, as I can massage the data prior to input using .asp or vb, but I am tied to retrieving it via SQR and Peoplesoft. I am extremely curious to know whether or not anyone thinks this is possible. Thanks for reading. |
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