Need advice on online fill in forms

[Bill Gower]

I am presently converting a vb6 app to asp.net. In one of my vb forms the
user clicks a button, and a word document is partially prefilled in with
data from a table and then the user fills in the rest of the word document,
saves the document and then closes the document which automatically then is
emailed to various people in the company. Can I do this from an asp.net
app? Have a word document appear, partially filled in and have the user
fill in the rest online and then email it after it is saved?


Bill

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

Can I do this from an ASP.NET app? Have a Word document appear, partially
filled in and have the user fill in the rest online and then email it
after it is saved?

Not really... You could look at SharePoint, I suppose, which handles
document sharing... You could also use this:
http://www.aspose.com/Products/Aspose.Words/ but I think it's overkill for
what you are trying to achieve...

I would suggest that you rethink your entire architecture here and find
another way of sharing the information in a web environment...

Why do Word document needs to be involved at all...?

 

[Bill Gower]

if I don't use Word documents, then what? The client wants to be able to
later click a link and be able to view the completed doc on screen.

Bill

 

[Jesse Houwing]

Hello Bill,

I am presently converting a vb6 app to asp.net. In one of my vb forms
the user clicks a button, and a word document is partially prefilled
in with data from a table and then the user fills in the rest of the
word document, saves the document and then closes the document which
automatically then is emailed to various people in the company. Can I
do this from an asp.net app? Have a word document appear, partially
filled in and have the user fill in the rest online and then email it
after it is saved?

using a website there is nothing that will be the same solution, but you
have a few options you could consider....

I'd have a look at infopath. Sharepoint document libraries come to mind as
well.

Office 2003 and above also feature a quite neat fueature where you can separate
a documents content from it's layout into two diffrent XML files which can
be combined easily again after changing the data. This is also an approach
you could investigate.

You could also offer the whole document as a asp.net page (no word at all)
and mail the link to that page around. That would be the most logical web
savvy solution I'd be able to come up with.

Then you can generate the document, let the user edit it and then use the
file upload control to upload it back to the server.

The 'best' solution would be to implement a webdav httphandler and use that
to edit the document straight on the server, but that would be a whole lot
of work.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

If I don't use Word documents, then what? The client wants to be able to
later click a link and be able to view the completed doc on screen.

But why does this need to be a "document" at all...?

If you go to Amazon.com and buy something, you don't fill in a Word
document?

When the client clicks a link, why don't you just display the information on
the screen...?

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

You could also offer the whole document as a asp.net page (no word at all)
and mail the link to that page around. That would be the most logical web
savvy solution I'd be able to come up with.

Why does anything need to be mailed anywhere...?

 

[Jesse Houwing]

Hello Mark Rae [MVP],

Why does anything need to be mailed anywhere...?

The original post mentioned that the document, once created, will be mailed
to a specific number of people. I guessed this is included in the existing
vb6 application.

Of course, you don't need to mail anything, but if you want to alert certain
poeple of a new document, mail is one of the easiest routes to take.

 

[Mark Rae [MVP]]

The original post mentioned that the document, once created, will be
mailed to a specific number of people. I guessed this is included in the
existing vb6 application.

Of course, you don't need to mail anything, but if you want to alert
certain poeple of a new document, mail is one of the easiest routes to
take.

OK - I see what you mean... You were talking about mailing clients to inform
them that new information is available for them rather than mailing a Word
document...

 

[Jesse Houwing]

Hello Mark Rae [MVP],

OK - I see what you mean... You were talking about mailing clients to
inform them that new information is available for them rather than
mailing a Word document...

That I was