Disclaimer: While this article was written before I started working at SoftArtisans, I do work at SoftArtisans now. Support for SoftArtisans products can be found at http://support.softartisans.com/
So today I tried out a product from SoftArtisans called OfficeWriter specifically the WordWriter feature. You can find a Demo here. I set out to create an application that would allow me to fill in a form and generate mailing labels to be printed. I found out that with SoftArtisans product this was extremely easy.
First I created a Mail Merge template in Microsoft office. You can download a copy of my Label Template if you would like.
Then I wrote the following code:
protected void generateBtn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { // Variables object[] arrValues = { firstNameTxt.Text, lastNameTxt.Text, addressTxt.Text, cityTxt.Text, stateTxt.Text, zipCodeTxt.Text }; generateLabels(arrValues); } private void generateLabels(object[] arrValues) { WordTemplate wt = new WordTemplate(); wt.Open("C:/labels.doc"); string[] arrNameFields = { "First_Name", "Last_Name", "Address_Line_1", "City", "State", "ZIP_Code" }; //Bind Mail Merge Fields with Data wt.SetDataSource(arrValues, arrNameFields); wt.Process(); //Save to browser wt.Save(Page.Response, "Labels.doc", false); }
with the following front end:
When opening the generate document I had the following output:
You can download my solution here, but remember that you need an Office Writer license or you must be using the demo license.