Creating mail merge templates including a preview functionality

Christopher Krause — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:44:00 GMT

Creating mail merge templates including a preview functionality

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Because of the new FieldAdapter class, MS Word compatible merge fields can be inserted easily into a document. Using the Windows Forms version of TX Text Control, a template designer can be easily built and deployed royalty-free.

In the shipped samples, TX Text Control demonstrates how to create templates by inserting the fields directly using the ApplicationField collection. This article describes how to create templates using the adapter fields. Additionally, it shows how to preview the template with the real data coming from a database.

This approach follows the same logic of creating a template like the shipped 'closed source' TX Template Designer:

- Open a database

- Select a table

- Insert fields

Details:

1. First, click on Open Database... and browse for an XML database file. A sample file comes with this project. If the XML database could be loaded properly, the contained tables are listed in the first combobox.

2. Select one of the listed tables. All column names will be added to the items of the second combobox.

3. The column names are used as field names of the inserted merge fields. If an item is selected, click Add field to insert the merge field into the document.

4. The loaded database is used to get the possible fields that can be used in the template. Additionally, the contained data rows can be used to preview the merged document. Click on Preview to enable the preview functionality.

Using the arrow buttons, it is possible to navigate through the data rows of the current table to preview all rows. You are able to use this nice approach as your basis for your own template designer.

Download the project and sample database file here (Visual Studio 2008 and at least a TX Text Control .NET 15.0 trial version is required):

Download Sample

About TX Text Control

TX Text Control was originally released in 1991, since then more than 40,000 copies have been sold. Starting off as a single, small DLL, TX Text Control has made its way through 16-bit DLL and VBX versions to today‘s Enterprise edition with its .NET and ActiveX components. The recent addition to the family, offers all of TX Text Control advanced word processing functionality in an easy-to-use server-side .NET component. Customers benefit from these years of experience, large user base, and at the same time, appreciate developing with a mature, reliable product.

Contact Informations:

support@textcontrol.com

North & South America:

Phone: +1 704-370-0110

Phone: +1 877-462-4772 (toll free)

Europe:

Phone: +49 421 335 910

Asia Pacific:

Phone: +886 2-2797-8508

LiveDocx: Generate documents with a web service

Christopher Krause — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 14:19:00 GMT

The Imaging Source just released its latest member of the family of word processing components: LiveDocx!

LiveDocx enables developers - using any programming language - to merge MS Word compatible word processing templates with any type of textual data. The resulting word processing document can be saved as a DOCX, DOC, RTF or Adobe PDF file.

This kind of functionality is useful when - for example - you wish to generate invoices from a web-site store or to create documents in a SOA environment.

In such application, a template, which stores the layout of the invoice can be generated in Microsoft Word or Open Office. A developer can then pass the data, which should appear in the invoice, to LiveDocx. On invoking the SOAP based service, the developer receives back a word processing document in the specified format (commonly PDF).

More information at:

LiveDocx

Contact Informations:

support@textcontrol.com

North & South America:
Phone: +1 704-370-0110
Phone: +1 877-462-4772 (toll free)

Europe:
Phone: +49 421 335 910

Asia Pacific:
Phone: +886 2-2797-8508

TX Text Control : templates

Creating mail merge templates including a preview functionality

Creating mail merge templates including a preview functionality

LiveDocx: Generate documents with a web service