FP7 to Word 2002 for Windows

[findinghungrysamurai]

I'm creating a database in FP7 on my own machine (running Mac OS 10.3) for use on a client's computer (running Windows XP). My client isn't very computer savvy (nor am I, really), so I'd like to create a button on the database to automatically export all of the data to a Word file. I know that I can export the data in tabbed and comma separated formats, but I wish to create a very specifically formatted Word file. This is easy enough using Word X for my machine, but I have no idea how to do it in a Windows environment. The client is running Word 2002 for Windows...anyone have any ideas on how to do an automated export in a specific format for Word 2002? I am also open to considering an export to an rtf file, given that I can preserve the database format in the export.

I appreciate any help anyone can give.

Best,

Brian

[Fenton]

You may want to check out:

http://www.chapsoft.com/ezxslt/index.html

I have not used it myself, other than messing about quite a while ago. But I've heard good things from others. It sounds like the most comprehensive way to get "formatted" text into a Word template.

Word is not an open source standard, so you can't really "export to Word." RTF is better. But even so, kind of a mess.

[findinghungrysamurai]

Fenton,

Thanks for the help.

I understand what you mean about Word. RTF will work fine, as would any other format that can be easily converted in a word processing program.

ezxslt looks like a great program, but I'm not sure if I can use the demo to complete this project. Additionally, it is definitely out of my price range.

Any tips on exporting to a formatted RTF file? I know it may be messy, but it looks like something I need to do.

Thanks again.

Best,

Brian

[Fenton]

*******. Lost my text while looking for more info. Oh well, you don't get the whole novel -]

Look for MS Word and RTF at this XSLT library:

http://www.filemaker.com/technologies/xslt_library.html

Yeah, it's convoluted. That's why ezXSLT was developed (using a highly developed derivative of the same technology). Did you look at his developer prices? Seemed pretty reasonable to me, considering what it takes to tweak XSL. And I don't see why you should be the one paying the whole cost of it.

I don't know what your contract/agreement is with your client; but if you promised to be able to produce highly formatted MS Word documents from FileMaker, with no budget for it, then you're in a tight spot.

If it's just for this one document and the format is fixed, you might be able to tweak the XSLT to get what you want. Another possibility, using 7, is to format blocks of text as CSS, then export a HTML text file (no, there's no "HTML" export, it's just a text file with tags). Or write your own CSS, which would probably produce cleaner code. Then open that with MS Word. Not exactly seamless, but may be good enough.

If he was on a Mac, there are some tools which others have developed for AppleScript which can convert formatted text to RTF (Scripting Additions and such). But I wouldn't know how to do that in Windows. Perhaps some Windows people have some better advice. There are PC-only ways to insert Word into FileMaker (OLE), but I haven't heard them much praised :-|