Creating RTF file to be merged with ColdFusion data??

[Steve Grosz]

I'm trying to create a RTF document on the fly merging it with
ColdFusion data pulled from one of my databases, that will in turn be
emailed out to customers as a DOC file.

Can anyone tell me how I can define the RTF/Doc file to set up data
fields that I will then replace with my ColdFusion variables when needed?

Thanks,
Steve

 

[Peter Jamieson]

Not sure, but I think it depends on how exactly you are thinking of filling
in those variables. If you want to end up with a .doc you're probably going
to have to open your .rtf with Word (unless you have a 3rd party method for
that) and there are various ways you could insert the values for "fields" .
If you want to put values in by changing the RTF, then open the RTF in Word,
there are a couple of ways I can think of to do that. But are these text
values, or might they be pictures?

For example, in the RTF representation of a Word document, for many field
types you have both a field defintion and a field result. If you can find a
way to search the plain text RTF file and replace each RTF field result
value with the appropriate text, you will probably have what you need. Or
maybe you could define a whole bunch of Custom Document Properties or WOrd
Document Variables, then either replace the relevant text in the RTF file
with the values you need, or open the document in Word and use VBA or some
such to set the document properties or variables?

Peter Jamieson