I was hoping for a good point in the correct direction, as this is something I have never done, and googling is getting me tied in knots.
I want to create a word document (docx) from C# on a ASP.NET MVC application.
Populating a template with something like mail merge would be great.
I have spent day googling this and keep finding archived documentation.
The following examples are from 2012
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/bb491088.aspx
Because you will generate documents on the server you should avoid Interop for document manipulation. You can use free libraries and SDKs based on OpenXML but this is difficult to learn and error prone.
It probably makes sense to choose one among 3rd party toolkits to get the job done quick and easy. Start by preparing MS Word template documents with placeholders for data. Then you can use c# to load the data for the reports and merge the data with templates to get final documents (docx, pdf, xps or image formats). Here is the code used by one such toolkit needed for merging data from the database with the template to get a pdf document:
IEnumerable<Customer> customers = DataAccess.GetCustomerById(15);
DocumentGenerator dg = new DocumentGenerator(customers);
DocumentGenerationResult result = dg.GenerateDocument("MyTemplate.docx", "MyReport.pdf");
You can also see these examples for more information.
Maybe Templater can be of help..
This is small library you can use to create word document on ASP.NET looking like mail merge...
Try demo http://templater.info/demo
Related
My customer gave me some Word and Powerpoint documents which specify how certain 'reports' generated by our product are supposed to look like.
That means, I need to modify those documents (replace placeholders etc.) and then I need to export them as PDF.
How would you solve this problem in C# ?
TL;DR: Editing the office document is no problem at all, but exporting that document to PDF (using Interop) allegedly causes issues when running it as a web server application. That's the whole problem here.
I agree that Interop is not suitable for document manipulation in server environment. I would approach this problem by preparing MS Word template documents with placeholders for data. Then I would use c# to load the data for the reports and merge the data with templates to get final documents (docx, pdf, xps or various image formats). There are 3rd party toolkits which make it quite easy. Here is the code used by one such toolkit needed for merging xml data with the template to get a pdf document:
XElement customers = XElement.Load("Customers.xml");
DocumentGenerator dg = new DocumentGenerator(customers);
DocumentGenerationResult result = dg.GenerateDocument("MyTemplate.docx", "MyReport.pdf");
You can of course also use free libraries and SDKs based on OpenXML but you should expect a steep learning curve, lots of debugging and lots of time invested.
Wkthmltopdf might be an option.
A completely different "report approach" could be, to save those office documents with the placeholders as mht (That's MHTML a web archive format). This could be done directly in MS Office or even programatically.
The placeholders could be easily exchanged by string search and replace. The mht files could directly be used to show the report instead of the PDF. A clear disadvantage of the mht format, is the HTML formatting. With PDF you have a clear and fix positioning.
We are using this kind of report creation. There are some flaws, but it works and the customer could edit the mht templates directly by right-click Open-With the prefered MS Office flavor.
You can use report generators, like FastReport.Net for solving your problems. It can assign different data for placeholders and also allow export to PDF.
First of all I want to say hi to the programming community, what I am looking for is a way to generate a report from my Windows Forms Application in word preferably, this report is basically a list of pre-configured days in a tour creation software I am creating.
I have searched everywhere and I cant seem to find information on how to start creating the report, I have all the information saved into a database, I just need to be able to get this information into word and ordered as it should be ordered.
I just want to be pointed in the right direction so I can research on it even further.
The exact thing I want to create is a word file that I wish I could share here so you can actually see what I mean.
Thank you for all your attention and help if possible.
I can point you in the right direction. Word documents are stored in a format called OpenXml which can be created and manipulated without actually using Word directly. That's good because you don't want to deal with code that actually starts an instance of Word and automates it (Interop.) It sort of works but it's not something I recommend dealing with ever.
OpenXml isn't fun either, but it's better. You can create your document "normally" using Word, save it, and then have your application use it as a template, opening a copy, populating some data, and then saving it.
Here's the reference for OpenXml with Word. I'm not saying it's pretty. It's not. The documentation is lacking. This page on adding text isn't linked from the previous page, even though many other topics are.
There are some nuget packages like this one that can help.
I once did a POC that did exactly what you're describing by opening and altering a document used a template using OpenXml. I'll see if I can dig up the code. But this is definitely a good direction to look in if Word is an absolute requirement.
This is a long shot, but can you output in HTML? If you can that's an even easier alternative.
Can you use Excel? That's also OpenXml but there's easier-to-use tools like EPPlus that simplify dealing with it, because it's not just the friendliest thing to work with.
An option that I would suggest is Crystal Reports. You can download the Crystal Reports add-in for Visual Studio for free from here. Crystal Reports is an easy way to perform reporting from various data sources including SQL. There are also a lot of free tutorials online for learning how to use CR. The syntax is a little strange, but it is easy enough to use.
The add-in allows you to create reports for your application and also build applications that can display, print, and export Crystal Reports.
You can export reports to .RTF (Rich Text Format) files. MS Word can open, edit, and convert RTF documents. It does a fairly decent job, but special formatting might take some work. This route is a ton easier than trying to write XML or anything else. I've written several reports designed for export to RTF. My boss runs the report, exports it, then edits it in Word. He loves the reports.
If you are planning on developing a lot of reports, purchasing the full version of Crystal Reports is well worth it. I believe they are on version 2016 currently.
If you do want to deal with automating Word, Microsoft's guide "Automating Applications Using the Office Object Model" Word-specific task content is here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/78whx7s6(v=vs.80).aspx
A larger example: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/316384
To begin, simply add an assembly reference to your project file for the correct Office Object Library (example: "Microsoft Word ##.0 Object Library"). Note that you must have Office installed to take this approach.
Good luck!
I have to open a word document using c# and do some changes in that document and save it again. Document will have lot of tables and styling. For example I have to process that document page by page. I have to change all italics to normal and all caps to small letters and save to that document only the changes without affecting the styling and alignment or format of the document.
Is that possible in c# .net? Please let me know it there any tutorial available based on my requirement. Basically I am a Java developer recently moved to c#. I have googled for past 2 days, I didn't get any proper data.
Personally, I use Aspose.NET. But that component is not free. If you need something free, I can also recommend the Microsoft Open XML Library:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericwhite/archive/2008/04/22/using-the-open-xml-sdk.aspx
I would not use Office Interop as Jim suggested. It's not very stable for server.
I need to make the information in the database usable by allowing the user to download it as a PDF or Excel spreadsheet (either one works, both is perfect).
I've looked around at a bunch of options, but I really can't decide which one I should use, let alone if any of those options are actually useful. Most of the options I've found revolve around converting already existing HTML files into PDFs which is not what I need. Also, it needs to be free. My bosses haven't given me a budget to spend on this
I'm not sure what other information I should include here.
Well, any help is greatly appreciated. If you have questions about missing information, I'll get it posted ASAP. I'm here all day, so I'll be able to respond to any comments very quickly.
EDIT: Oh wow! Huge thanks, guys, for the massive response! I got a ton of ideas. This is super-helpful. Thanks!
if you want to generate an Excel (or also a Word) you can use openXml. You can create a new document exactly the way you want from pure code.
OpenXml SDK page
The solution I usually propose to my clients in this situation is to use Sql Server Reporting Services (SSRS). You can use the ReportViewer control included with it in order to generate PDF's, Excel spreadsheets, XML files, CSV files, and others. If you need ad hoc reporting, there is a Report Builder available as well.
Barring that, you can use OpenXml to generate Excel spreadsheets and there are a host of PDF toolkits available.
Have you looked into the reportviewer control, which is part of Visual Studio?
It allows you to export the report in PDF or Excel format.
http://www.carlosag.net/tools/excelxmlwriter/sample
check this might be useful for you
There are lots of reporting solutions out there such as SQL Server Reporting Services(for which you might already have a license). Take a look at Reporting (free || open source) Alternatives to Crystal Reports in Winforms which can likely be applied to the web with a bit of serialization.
I would suggest thinking about rolling your own depending on the situation. You could use pdfsharp for the pdf export and EPPlus for excel. They are both very easy to use and, I'm pretty sure, available in nuget with a couple of clicks.
If you want to go the Excel route, i'd recommend this article from Stephen Walther entitled ASP.NET MVC Tip #2 - Create a custom Action Result that returns Microsoft Excel Documents. This uses an old trick of writing an HTML document with an Excel mime type. This is different than streaming a native Excel file. And it's fairly easy to change the to rendering a CSV file if you want to strip it down, and make it a more universal file. Just remember to double-quote all the fields if there's a possibility of commas showing up.
If what your doing isn't too complicated you can use CSV files. CSV stands for comma separated values, and it is what it sounds like. You can create simple tables and columns using commas. For example paste the following lines into a text file:
heading1,heading2,heading3
info1,info2,info3
info1,info2,info3
Save the text file as a .csv file and voila - an excel spreadsheet. Obviously it is extremely easy to build these looping object collections. Mind you if you need any complicated text formatting etc then it is not really the best option.
Could you give me some recommendations on free/Openspurce library etc that could be integrated on asp.net application to Generate Pdf out of Html fragments. I will be generating Invoices that is displayed in DataGrid and tables. Is there some readily available library that would print the whole Table with Datagrid into Pdf. ITextSharp seems nice but i will have to do the tough work of adding tables and blah blah when everything is already in the webpage.
this is a possible duplicate but it generates pdf from Full page which is not desired
Possible duplicate question
ITextSharp does almost what you ask and is Open Source, however the API for conversion process has not been touched for years and is outdated. I therefore would recommend a commercial product.
Something like Winnovative HTML to PDF Converter
To be honest I look at it like this, you can save money by buying a licence for a commercial product rather than spending days developing a solution yourself.
Edit If it is for generating invoices alone then I would use iTextSharp as it does not take long to learn the basics. However if you want to be able to convert a full rich webpage into a PDF then go down the commercial route.
These links may help:
Convert HTML to PDF in .NET
Generate PDF from ASP.NET from raw HTML/CSS content?
Creating PDF Invoices - Are there any templating solutions?
When doing invoices, I usually go a slightly different way, by starting with Aspose.Words and using the nested mail merge feature.
Another option could be the HTML to PDF feature of Aspose.Pdf.
Both libraries are commercial only, I don't know whether this is appropriate for your project.