Joining Office documents programatically

[Ianb]

Hi

I am building a doocument management system (using sharepoint as a
framework). One of the requirements is to be able to bind more than one of
the documents in the system together. The bound document needs to be editable
- so it seems pdf is not an option (although binding pdfs would be the
easiest solution). My next option is to use MS Word documents (either in Word
..doc format or Word .htm format) although it would be helpful to bind other
Office type documents aswell.

Is there a solution that can involke programmatically? (or any other
solution). I remember when Office 95 came out there was a binder application
bundled with the software. Perhaps this is available in another format.

Thanks

Ian B

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SWFuYg==?=,

I am building a doocument management system (using sharepoint as a
framework). One of the requirements is to be able to bind more than one of
the documents in the system together. The bound document needs to be editable
- so it seems pdf is not an option (although binding pdfs would be the
easiest solution). My next option is to use MS Word documents (either in Word
..doc format or Word .htm format) although it would be helpful to bind other
Office type documents aswell.

Is there a solution that can involke programmatically? (or any other
solution). I remember when Office 95 came out there was a binder application
bundled with the software. Perhaps this is available in another format.

Binder would be a possibility; you'd have to install it from Office 2000 or 97.
It does have an automation interface. I'm not certain, though, how well it would
work with Sharepoint; you'd need to test that.

It's possible to insert Excel and Powerpoint files into Word documents; whether
the result would be what you need depends on WHY you need to "lump them
together".

Beyond that, something might be possible with Office XML (Office 2003).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

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[Ianb]

Thanks Cindy... please see below

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SWFuYg==?=,

Binder would be a possibility; you'd have to install it from Office 2000 or 97.
It does have an automation interface. I'm not certain, though, how well it would
work with Sharepoint; you'd need to test that.

It's possible to insert Excel and Powerpoint files into Word documents; whether
the result would be what you need depends on WHY you need to "lump them
together".

Beyond that, something might be possible with Office XML (Office 2003).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)


This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

I'll look at binder as you suggest. as for inserting Excel and Powerpoint
files into Word documents - i need to be able to do it programmatically. The
only way I can see to do that is using xml file formats in 2003 as you
suggest (as other file formats do not seem to be easy to update
programmatically). Even with 2003, inserting objects into the xml file format
causes portions of the file to go binary and so once again difficult to edit.

How about htm word files. can these be easily edited programmatically
(please forgive any duplication with my other posts)'

Cheers

Ian

 

[Cindy M -WordMVP-]

Hi =?Utf-8?B?SWFuYg==?=,

as for inserting Excel and Powerpoint
files into Word documents - i need to be able to do it programmatically. The
only way I can see to do that is using xml file formats in 2003 as you
suggest (as other file formats do not seem to be easy to update
programmatically). Even with 2003, inserting objects into the xml file format
causes portions of the file to go binary and so once again difficult to edit.

Hmmm. You still haven't said WHY you need to do this, so it's really hard to do
much thinking for you... Using Automation you can easily insert any file type
whose parent application is an OLE server into a Word document. I usually insert
a LINK field (that's faster and more reliable than InsertObject), then Unlink it
if I don't need the link.

How about htm word files. can these be easily edited programmatically
(please forgive any duplication with my other posts)'

Surely. They're pure text, same as xml or rtf (another possibility for you).
However, I'd imagine trying to embed an OLE object in HTM is just as finicky as
with XML (or RTF).

Cindy Meister
INTER-Solutions, Switzerland
http://homepage.swissonline.ch/cindymeister (last update Jun 8 2004)
http://www.word.mvps.org

This reply is posted in the Newsgroup; please post any follow question or reply
in the newsgroup and not by e-mail

 

[Ianb]

Hi Cindy

I'm sorry for not being clear. Basically I am building a sharepoint based
document managements system (which is challenging as I am new to sharepoint
and infopath and don't have alot of experience in XML or XSLT). Oney
requirements is that I need to be able to "bind" multiple documents (of the
users choosing) and create a super document that is readable (and editable)
on the client machine. these machines are typically low spec although we can
(and will probable have to use) Citrix to deploy the system to these clients.
Just as an aside, another requirement is that the system automatically update
links as they are changed in the system.

I have been looking at various file formats and have almost concluded that
we should use word xml docs distributed over citrix until our clients come up
to the required spec.

My concerns are 1. that the speed of citrix might turn off the users - hence
the investigation into the XSLT ransform you talked about in another of my
posts and
2. some of our documents (eg visio) are not supported by office xml. As you
said these objects may be linked but that would make the documents less
portable (as they would have multiple files)

After all that I have the [enjoyable] challenge of learning about xml and
how to implement the binder and link updating solutions