Chris__T
Posts: 339
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| Posted: 03/25/2008, 2:57 PM |
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Anyone have any good experience working with Form Letters in the report builder.
I'm trying to create form letters to mail out, based on past due information in the database. I've got the form letters all setup- no problems there. It's just they aren't viewing right and each letter (record) isn't separated from the next, making printing 8.5 x 11 letters hard.
Anyone who has had luck with these please let me know!
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Vasiliy
Posts: 378
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| Posted: 03/26/2008, 6:17 AM |
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Chris,
for printing letters you may consider:
- 1. Generate letters in RTF format (that's what we do)
- 2. Generate letters in PDF format using DynamicPDF (that's what we do not do, but we use DynamicPDF for other reports, where text editing is not required)
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Chris__T
Posts: 339
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| Posted: 03/26/2008, 6:32 AM |
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Thanks. Is #1 done in CodeCharge Studio?
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wkempees
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| Posted: 03/27/2008, 2:42 PM |
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@V, possible misunderstanding:
@C_T:
Did you mean using the actual option 'form letters' in the report builder?
I remember something like setting records per page to 1, to force the
reportbuilder to build a 'form letter' per SQL-row and do a page-break.
Walter
"Chris__T" <Chris__T@forum.codecharge> schreef in bericht
news:647ea5073c5e41@news.codecharge.com...
> Thanks. Its #1 done in CodeCharge Studio?
> ---------------------------------------
> Sent from YesSoftware forum
> http://forums.codecharge.com/
>
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Vasiliy
Posts: 378
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| Posted: 03/28/2008, 6:40 AM |
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> ... Is #1 done in CodeCharge Studio?
No, we use 3-rd party solution.
2 wkempees:
I understood, but offered a different approach. 
Letter-like reports require more flexibility, and I suggested to generate a RTF-doc.
Sorry, I did not explain the first part of a solution, which is "document template" designer, where free text can have data placeholders (tokens), similar to MS-Word mail merge:
http://www.softcreator.com/Temp/Rpt-Letters_TemplateDesigner.gif
And THEN  , based on a document template we generate a document (letter) and let end-user view/edit/print this doc.
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Chris__T
Posts: 339
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| Posted: 03/31/2008, 1:47 PM |
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I'll have to look into that Walter, with the records per page set to 1. After a little researching I realized I could do the same job with a mail merge between Access and Word. It works better and I have more control of the look of the form, plus it will be easier to setup for the user to work with. Thanks for your responses!
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wkempees
Posts: 1679
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| Posted: 03/31/2008, 2:23 PM |
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@C: That will work well in an Intranet environment or ate least a defined environment.
Walter
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Chris__T
Posts: 339
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| Posted: 04/01/2008, 11:25 AM |
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yeah, it's on the intranet. I guess I love CCS so much I want it to do everything. 
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marcwolf
Posts: 361
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| Posted: 04/20/2008, 3:53 PM |
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Hi There.
I have had great success using MHT files for form letters.
The technique is this.
1. Take a word document complete with headers, footers, (headers and footers can contain pictures etc), section, page numbering etc.
2. Put in findable tags like "[*My_Text*] in the appropriate area's
3. save the document as an MHT file.
Now when you look through the MHT file in a text editor it seems daunting until you realise that the "=" is used as a special character and the notmal "=" that would be in the documents are now marked as "3D".
Next - in your processes open up the MHT document as a file and read the contents into a string. Then using the REPLACE function you can put in your text. If your text contains HTML tags then you will need to replace the "=" with "3D"
Save the string out as a "*.DOC" file. Read it into Ms-Word and you have your completed documents.
Advantages here are
1. This process preserves the headers and footers.
2. The document is formatted and takes into account page breaks etcs.
3. Simple - if you know HTML then you can do a lot of things.
There are a couple of little gotcha's but if you want to drop me a line I can give you some code to get around them.
The gotcha' include issues with MIME format re the 80 characters per line. I have writting a little routine that joins broken lines/words. Also I have some tag stripping routine to clean up MSWord's SPELL and GRAMMAR tags.
Take Care
Dave
Save this MHT file somewhere for your application to pick u
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