Web-Site-based Word Mail Merge & Access DB

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Alex Maghen - 15 Jan 2005 01:15 GMT

Hi. I currently have two files, "MergeTemplate.doc" and "DB.mdb" and I have
it set up so that I can run a mail merge from the MS Word 2003 file
("MergeTemplate.doc") and it'll load its data from the Access database file
("DB.mdb").

Now my question is, can I set this up so that both the MDB file and MS Word
2003 file are on my web server and then, if a user has Word 2003 or later and
then go to my site and click the MS Word Mail Merge Template file and choose
to open it in the browser, it can load its Merge Datat from the MDB file
that's on the web site too and merge to a new file?

The idea is that I want the template, the MDB, etc. to all stay on the web
site so that the user doesn't need to download either of the files to
generate and print the most updated version.

Ideas?

Alex

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Peter Jamieson - 17 Jan 2005 12:05 GMT

I don't think you are going to get very far on this one - as far as I know
Word does not let you connect to "file" data sources using Internet URLs. If
your web server is also part of a traditional MS network (i.e. can be
accessed via a Windows network share name) then you may have a chance.

Peter Jamieson

> Hi. I currently have two files, "MergeTemplate.doc" and "DB.mdb" and I
> have
[quoted text clipped - 19 lines]
>
> Alex

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Alex Maghen - 17 Jan 2005 21:21 GMT

Okay, what about this: What if I create "http://xyz.com/DataSrc.aspx" which
will return the XML of the data from the database that I want to use as the
source data for the mail merge. If the person who wants to do the merge has
the MS Word file with the merge template local to their computer, does Word
support a URL serving up XML as the data source for a Mail Merge?

Alex

> I don't think you are going to get very far on this one - as far as I know
> Word does not let you connect to "file" data sources using Internet URLs. If
[quoted text clipped - 25 lines]
> >
> > Alex

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Peter Jamieson - 17 Jan 2005 21:52 GMT

> does Word
> support a URL serving up XML as the data source for a Mail Merge?

No.
1. Word does not let you connect to any kind of file data source via a URL.
If you try to do it, Word lets you select a URL in the dialog box, then
fails to connect. As far as I know.
2. Word cannot use .xml files as data source, at least not directly

A more viable approach may be to use a client-server database as your data
source and an ODBC driver or OLEDB provider. If I were doing that I'd go for
the option that makes the connectivity easiest to achieve. Whatever you do,
you will have to have either a file or a machine DSN on the users machine or
on a share accessible from that machine - for an ODBC connection, it could
be a file URL. If it is an OLEDB connection, if might be a a udl file or a
.odc file.

Peter Jamieson

> Okay, what about this: What if I create "http://xyz.com/DataSrc.aspx"
> which
[quoted text clipped - 42 lines]
>> >
>> > Alex

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