Printing With ASP

[anon007]

With our old database using access we used reports send letters to our clients based on information from a form. I want to automate this using asp connected to our ms sql database. I have not tried this with ASP yet but was wondering do asp pages print in exact dimensions or would word be a better solution, connecting word documents to our database but ASP seems much easier if it will print correctly. I want to be able to put our report pages in a file outside the root and have them run every night at 3AM via scheduled task but before I start I want to make sure this is a feasible solution. Any thoughts?

 

[anon007]

I think I answered my own question. I think I will connect the word doc to the database then writ the vb code to filter and print only the data needed. Anyone have a better solution please let me know

 

[Sheco]

If you want it to run it on a schedule you might as well make it a .VBS script instead of an ASP because taking the web server out of the equation is one less "moving part" in the machine.

Also ASP just generates the HTML/JavaScript/CSS/whatever to send to the browser... how it prints depends on your browser and printer.

The problem descriptions sounds kinda like the "Mail Merge" feature that is already built in to winword.

 

[anon007]

I think your right have the VBS run the word doc and mail merage is how to connect the doc to the server with script telling it what to print. Thanks

 

[gbaughma]

THe way that I usually do this is to dynamically generate the word content within the web page.

Ummm... something along the lines of:

content-type.microsoftword or something..... (I'd have to look it up; I'm at home on vacation for the holidays)

The other thing that you can do to make things look "pretty" is to use CSS so that the page is re-rendered when it is printed.

Either of those are simple, viable solutions.



Just my 2¢
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--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com