storing a Word document as a customprop

[Jan Schenkel]

Actually, RTF documents are pretty much on-par with native Word documents as far as features are concerned, and tables definitely work - perhaps not in TextEdit or WordPad ; but if you have a full Word version, it should be just fine.
Give it a try: save your Word doc as an RTF, suck it up in a Rev custom prop, do the merge, and save it as an RTF again. Tip: when you modify your template, always do a 'SaveAs' or Word may produce an 'incremental' file, where your merge fields are garbled and cannot be replaced.

Jan Schenkel
=====
Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution
<http://www.quartam.com>

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)


--- On Fri, 6/12/09, Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: storing a Word document as a customprop
> To: "How to use Revolution" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> Date: Friday, June 12, 2009, 7:01 AM
> Bummer. I can't use RTF because the
> documents contain tables, and I'm pretty much stuck with
> that. I'll use my own FORMalizer utility to overlay fields
> on a PNG of the blank document and fill them in that way. I
> was exploring other possibilities...
> 
> -- Peter
> 
> Peter M. Brigham
> pmbrig at gmail.com
> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
> 
> 
> On Jun 12, 2009, at 9:24 AM, Jan Schenkel wrote:
> 
> > 
> > The Word file format is binary, and may contain
> checksums that will not add up when you replace something in
> it. It's better to save the Word file as an RTF document (as
> this is not a binary, but text-based file format) and fill
> that up instead.
> > You may want to use the 'merge' function to make your
> life easier - see also the articles that I wrote for the
> RevUp Newsletter:
> > - The Power of Merge (revUp | Issue 55 | August 18th,
> 2008)
> >  <http://runrev.com/newsletter/august/issue55/newsletter2.php>
> > - The Word of Merge - part 1 (revUp | Issue 61 |
> November 20th, 2008)
> >  <http://runrev.com/newsletter/november/issue61/newsletter3.php>
> > - The Word of Merge - part 2 (revUp | Issue 62 |
> December 22nd, 2008)
> >  <http://runrev.com/newsletter/december/issue62/newsletter3.php>
> > 
> > HTH,
> > 
> > Jan Schenkel
> > =====
> > Quartam Reports & PDF Library for Revolution
> > <http://www.quartam.com>
> > 
> > =====
> > "As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish
> at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)
> > 
> > 
> > --- On Fri, 6/12/09, Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > 
> >> From: Peter Brigham MD <pmbrig at gmail.com>
> >> Subject: storing a Word document as a customprop
> >> To: "Use-rev mailing list" <use-revolution at lists.runrev.com>
> >> Date: Friday, June 12, 2009, 5:55 AM
> >> I would like to generate a Word doc
> >> stored in a customprop but I'd like to modify it
> first by
> >> script. I have a template successfully stored as
> the
> >> printDoc of this stack, with placeholders in
> applicable
> >> places like "<last>", "<first>", etc.
> However,
> >> this doesn't work:
> >> 
> >> on mouseup
> >>    put fld "Name" into tName
> >>    put item 1 of tName into lastName
> >>    put word 1 of item 2 of tName into
> >> firstName
> >>    put the printDoc of this stack into
> tDoc
> >>    replace "<last>" with lastName
> in
> >> tDoc -- * problem
> >>    replace "<first>" with
> firstName in
> >> tDoc -- * problem
> >>    put the printPath of this stack into
> >> pPath
> >>    -- contains something like
> >> "binfile:/Users/pmbrig/Desktop/wordTest.doc"
> >>    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
> >>    put tolower(lastName) & ".doc"
> into
> >> item -1 of pPath
> >>    set the filetype to "MSWDW8BN"
> >>    put tDoc into url pPath
> >> end mouseup
> >> 
> >> I get an error from the finder that the file
> "doesn't
> >> appear to be a Microsoft Word file." If I comment
> out the
> >> two "replace" lines in the script, the original
> template
> >> file is exported fine, and it opens fine in Word
> with a
> >> double-click. So there's something Word doesn't
> like about
> >> the replace operation. Is there any way to do this
> so I
> >> create the template document modified with data
> filled in
> >> from Rev?
> >> 
> >> -- Peter
> >> 
> >> Peter M. Brigham
> >> pmbrig at gmail.com
> >> http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig
> >> 
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> > 
> > 
> > 
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