RE: Microsoft Word and the iSeries

["Jonathan Mason" <jonathan.mason@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Jerry

I thought about using mail merge and then discounted it for a couple of
reasons:

1) The need to be able to have (potentially) header, detail and footer data
to be merged and

2) The additional manual steps needed to run the mail merge

Ideally they want to be able to generate the document on the iSeries and
place it in the IFS where Word can find it.  I also thought about generating
an RTF file and including replacement codes such as %%ORDERNO%% which the
programs could overwrite with the correct values, but on looking at an RTF
file's structure it looked too prone to errors.

Thanks

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Jerry Adams
Sent: 17 January 2007 14:35
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Microsoft Word and the iSeries

I've never done it from an iSeries, but I have done tons of mail merges 
in Word.  Since Word's mail merge involves a template with merge fields 
and a data source (I usually use an Excel spreadsheet, but any kind of 
db file would work), couldn't you create the data source on the iSeries 
and, then, populate the data source in Windows?  I think there are even 
some open source utilities around for creating an Excel spreadsheet from 
DB2 files.


If the idea is to create the merged document on the iSeries and, then, 
to export it to Word, that would seem to be a bit harder, though I think 
I recall reading of such tools.  Can't recall the names or leads though.


        * Jerry C. Adams
*IBM System i5/iSeries Programmer/Analyst
B&W Wholesale Distributors, Inc.* *
voice
        615.995.7024
fax
        615.995.1201
email
        jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:jerry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>



Jonathan Mason wrote:
> Hi List
>
> Has anybody got or read the book "Microsoft Word and the iSeries" by G.
> Wayne Hawks?
>
> I have a customer who would like to have their AS400 (and I use the name
> generally) data incorporated into Word documents.  At a price of $395 (or
> £395 in the UK) I want to be sure that I can achieve what they want using
> the book for guidance before spending that much money.
>
> Are there other alternatives available for getting data into Word?
Ideally
> what they would like is to be able to create a template in Word and
generate
> a report using the template.
>
> Thanks
>
> Jonathan 
>
>
>
>
>