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Best way to generate PDF in c# using Word or InDesign?

I'm comfortable generating Word documents using Aspose.Word (which can also save as a PDF) but I've recently been asked to do the same thing using a PDF as the starter template. We recently bought Aspose.Total and whilst Aspose.Pdf looks like it can do some manipulations it doesn't look to be all that flexible/easy (like adding a big line of text and getting it to wrap, and shifting other content down the page if it takes up more space).
What would be the best way of using a PDF as a template for what is basically a bit like a mail merge from a database? Should I turn it into a PDF form and merge it from an XML data source? Is this even viable or would such a form still have a limitation on spacing (so that longer lines/paragraphs of text won't reflow the document where necessary)?
From what I can tell it doesn't look like InDesign can be manipulated in c# even via a COM object (which would be nasty on a web server anyway).
If I recreated the InDesign/PDF as a Word document I'm sure I could work wonders, but you know what these publishing types are like, who think Word documents are the tool of the devil. These PDFs are never going to a professional printer anyway; they're just brochures for a client to download from a web page (based on information in a database) for printing/use at home.

You have indeed many solutions for such a web to print project. Choosing one is a matter of budget, requirements and users count. Placing dynamic contents can be done at the simpliest with PDF forms fillable with xml data.
On the other hand you can work with InDesign Server and output PDF based on InDesign templates. That's generally a good choice when a large amount of users needs to get rich pdf files in parallel. But the costs are heavy.
You can also envision A pitstop server or Callas PDFToolBox Server to place dynamic texts based on variables as supplied by you. The good point here is that you don't need much coding here. Those apps are ready to use.
You can at last consider command line tools. A few of them may have some useful commands such as pdfTk or cPdf to merge texts.

Display MSWord file content in any browser

I want to display content of word file in browser same like we display pdf file in browser. I don't want any plugin because if I use plugin I have to install for all browser. I want just one solution which works in all browser.
I have searched on google, but I found all link which directly download word file and open it.
Currently I am using object tag for displaying pdf file but it is not working for word file. It is showing message: The plug-in is not supported.

Using a browser plug-in (such as the free Word Viewer) is by far the easiest method, and arguably the most correct - however, there are some alternatives if you really don't want to do this:
Convert the Word document to another format (e.g. HTML/PDF) on-the-fly before the response is sent. For Word 97-2003 documents, you can do this with VSTO/Automation. For Word 2007+ documents, you can use the OpenXML SDK (although you will have to write the conversion algorithm yourself).
Use an XSL stylesheet to transform the Word markup (docx) into html/css. You can do this server-side or, potentially, with client-side scripting (JavaScript). Some useful resources here and here.

Great question. In principle, browsers only really tend to support viewing websites (e.g. html). Most, however, also support viewing PDFs, and, as you've correctly identified, you could use plugins to extend the behaviour. Crucially, though, some browsers provide document viewing with a javascript-based viewer.
I wasn't aware of it before you asked, but there are apparently javascript implementations of non-PDF document readers--for example, ViewerJS--that seem to directly support .odt. With a little digging, you might be able to find an implementation/plugin for a javascript viewer that supports .docx. However, I can't recommend one from personal experience at the moment. I would recommend searching for javascript document viewers though.

Opening Word (.docx) files on a Windows Form C#

I'm trying to make my program have the ability to display a Microsoft Word file on a form but not having any luck in doing so. I want to be able to open the file and display it on the form as a Read-Only. So basically just display it's contents. Various users on the web have recommended displaying files in the WebBrowser control (under toolbox). I have tried this but failed to get it working. My end goal is to be able to annotate on top of the web browser (or something of similar manner) and subsequently save the annotations along with the opened file.
I'm not that experienced in the C# language too so any help on how to achieve my problem would be greatly appreciated.

You need a DOCX viewer control. My company recently gave away our multi-format WinForms viewer control as a free product - XtremeDocumentStudio .NET Free. It can display DOCX and is available on NuGet. It does not require a Web Browser control for embedding an online viewer or Word software installed locally.
http://www.nuget.org/packages/XtremeDocumentStudio.NETFree/

There are some good links that might help you.
First, you will find a closely related or similar question here
And in that conversation someone posted the following link which is about how to build a user control for displaying Word documents in a webbrowser control.
I also found another article here about how to integrate Excel in a Windows Form application using WebBrowser. But Excel is used as an example and you may be able to adapt it to Word.

Create PDF from HTML form results in C#

I have a project where I need to create an HTML form (no problem) and then create a PDF file from the results using C#.
I have done this before in PHP using FPDF but this one needs to be C#. Ideally I want to put the code into a user control and then stick it in an Umbraco website.
Can anyone recommend a good way to do this? PDF doesn't need to be fancy, it'll just display text, we aim to create a generic purchase order based on what the customer wants from the form, which can then be emailed to them to print off on headed paper.
Thanks

There are a couple of recent problems with iTextSharp. The most annoying is that in the latest version they've deprecated the HTML parser. So now everything has to work through the XMLWorkerHelper singleton and parses through ParseXHtml. I find this a real pain, since HTML pages which aren't well formed appear fine on browser, parse OK in the old method and now crash out with an exception. So it necessitates an extra step to make sure your HTML is well formed (as XHTML) first. If you are generating your HTML from an ASPX page, then using Server.Execute() to get the stream, then this might be useful to you for iTextSharp:
http://jwcooney.com/2012/12/30/generate-a-pdf-from-an-asp-net-web-page-using-the-itextsharp-xmlworker-namespace/
Be mindful that iTextSharp has a distinct lack of any decent documentation of the modern changes (being mindful that the Java iText documents don't translate perfectly to C#), it makes the learning curve far too long and steep for any practical use in short spaces of time. I've basically given up on that platform, though may just create a baseline system to get something working lean whilst I then learn another framework.
As a result, I'm looking at PDFizer and PDFSharp libraries. If I have some success, I'll report back.

here is a library for converting HTML to PDF
http://pdfcrowd.com/web-html-to-pdf-net/

I like the PDFsharp library. Not sure how it would work for your needs, though.

Generating PDF Report from database in C#, specifically ASP

I need to generate a high quality report based on information in a SQL Server database, and I want very explicit control of the layout and appearance from inside C#.
I have several choices that I know of that are already being used for various other reports at our company:
1) SQL Server's built in Reporting Services
2) Adobe Forms
3) Crystal Reports
This information I need as PDF directly parallels what is already being displayed in the user's web browser as HTML, so creating a print stylesheet and converting the browser body to PDF is an option as well.
So this creates option 4:
4) JavaScript convert HTML to PDF (my preference at this time)
Does anybody have a recommendation as to which approach I should take, or even better an alternative? All the choices seem pretty horrible.

I've used iTextSharp with very good results. It is an open-source .NET port of a java library. It works really well for creating PDFs from scratch. Remember that editing PDFs will always be hacky with any library, because PDF is an output format, not a read-write format.
Provided your HTML is fairly clean (remove javascript postbacks, anchors, ...),the iText HtmlWorker can convert HTML to PDF, if you prefer that route.
HTML to PDF in using iTextSharp:
Document doc = new Document(PageSize.A4);
HTMLWorker parser = new HTMLWorker(doc);
PdfWriter.GetInstance(doc, Response.OutputStream);
Also here.

Use SSRS, it has a built in PDF rendering mode.

I have used two other PDF report libraries with great success; Active Reports and Telerik Reporting. Personally I prefer the latter when it comes to programmatic control of layout and such.

Take a look also at the DevExpress Reporting (non-free 3rd party tool):
Overview
Online Demos
Documentation

Yes, you should use the best tools to get the best solution. The best tool in this case probably is SSRS.
But that's just looking at the capabilities of the tool.
Don't forget to look at your own capabilities!
My story: I know SQL, I know C#. (Both intermediate, I'm not a guru.)
Then I lay my hands on SSRS. And burnt them, once, twice, etc.
At the end, there was a nice result. So burning your fingers is not a wrong thing to do.
But first try to pull your html through an html to pdf converter (demo version) and see if the result it serves your needs.
Currently I'm using both:
SSRS for creating invoices, because amounts have to be transported from one page to the next
Winnovative to generate documents that only need page numbers

I would suggest using .Net ReportViewer control in local mode (no report server required). It works in both webforms and winforms. You create a client-side report (.rdlc) file (which contains all the visuals as well as placement of data fields), link it up to the ReportViewer, and supply the data (DataTable or collection of objects, as long as the fields match, it doesn't matter). In client mode it supports exporting to pdf and excel (and Word too? don't remember). By default these done by a dropdown in the control itself however you can programmatically export to any of the supported formats as well. You'll end up with a byte array you can shove into a file stream.
Basically you get most of the good parts of SSRS without all of that backend complexity. There should be a ReportViewer folder in %programFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\ReportViewer - but versions exist for 2005 and 2008 as well. Check out http://gotreportviewer.com/

I think the 4th option is the best. In this case you don't need to change either layout of the HTML page or a layout of PDF, if one of them has been changed.
It is also more convenient making a nice design via HTML than programmatically via C# :)
Take a look at WebToPDF.NET which is a .NET component written in C# that converts HTML to PDF. The converter supports HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.0, XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 including page breaks, forms and links. It passes all W3C tests (except BIDI).

You can use Fast Report it's good tool and i has a free version