Past usedMAIL MERGE using DDE - Anyone know any of the following questions?

Question

Hi All,
Years ago I had called MS Word through DDE, Dynamic Data Exchange, old technology, and created form letter passing address info from the database.
I used PowerBuilder to:
1. Open MS Word
2. Call Mail Merge with a template name (which had the tags to replace)
3. Passing the results of a query
Oh ya... we need HTMLDB to call MS Word on the client...
1. ) Anyone know how to bring up MS WORD - (Not Word Pad) on the client?
2.) Word had an interface, DDE, to send commands to Word.
I think I'm remembering correctly..
I'm going to did a bit but it will take time to get to it so I was hoping to get a head start by someone's experience and have a few KEY words to search on??
Thanks, Bill
Message was edited by:
bcarlis_2000
Message was edited by:
bcarlis_2000

Answer 1

Hi Bill,
My Team uses MSWord mail merge with a 2 step process:
One: Build a report that contains the data you need for the Mail Merge and then export it to a CSV file.
Two: Export the mail merge template (which is stored in a BLOB) to the same directory as the CSV file. The template is set up to use the CSV file as its datasource.
It's a bit clunky but our users seem content with it.
Another alternative would be to search this forum for "Mail Merge". One posting (a year ago) shows how to do a mail merge using an RTF file in one step (after importing the RTF template into your APEX application). The only downside was that the RTF file has a 30K size limit (not a problem if you do not have to include a graphic like a logo).
By the way, I used to control the MS Mail Merge process directly from within VB6. The two step process above seems like a bit of a step backwards but it works.
Hope this helps.
Cheers
Patrick Cimolini