HELP - Click Action to open a Word Merged document

[proflola]

Hello,

Here's the scenario. Our company has developed a web-based application. The user clicks on a record in a list to review the record details. We want to have a printable copy appear at the click of a button. The data underlying the printable report is stored in multiple tables within a SQL ODBC database.

We need a quick fix by Friday. I've developed an MS Word merge document to handle the data. I am also skilled in MS Access and Crystal Reports design. Here's what I'm looking for:

1. Have any ideas on how to handle this quickly?
2. What is the code to open an MS WORD Merge document object upon a button click.
3. If I used MS Access or Crystal Reports how would I open just the report with a click of the button?

Again, I have a tight time constraint. Any suggestions are welcome!

--Sandy

 

[Nimroduk]

There's several ways to approach this and it all depends on certain things that you haven't mentioned.

If you can guarantee that all the client machines have Word installed:
1) If it is a browser based application you should be able to just push the Word document at their browser and it will automagically open it.
2) Push the binary content of the Word document to the client application. Save it as a temporary document and open it using COM.

If the client may not have Word then you'll need to open the document on the server. Save it as HTML and push the HTML to the client.