Please start any new threads on our new
site at https://forums.sqlteam.com. We've got lots of great SQL Server
experts to answer whatever question you can come up with.
| Author |
Topic |
|
kdd21
Starting Member
11 Posts |
 Posted - 2006-11-10 : 19:38:44
|
| I'm looking for a dumbed-down mailmerge capability to integrate into our VB application. Report Builder seems to be awful close in that it allows the modelling of the datasource in order to minimize its complexity to the end user, but it's ability to produce the report in mailing letter format is unclear. I'm working on getting it installed here so I can play with it but in the meantime I've been googling for some details that haven't been all that easy to find-- ("report builder" is far too generic a term to target it well, for one thing).Also, apparently Report Builder utilizes templates-- I'm wondering if it might be possible to create a custom template that would help out here.The alternative appears to be hacking together the XML glue between Word and SQL Server-- which is beyond the capabilities of the end users, so we'd have to create a similar "builder" formatting tool from scratch that could then generate the required Word doc and XML piece needed to do the merge. We'd prefer a solution that doesn't require us to construct either a custom layout OR data modelling tool from scratch. The hope is we can leverage some things that already exist here...--Sync--Sync |
|
|
kdd21
Starting Member
11 Posts |
Posted - 2006-11-14 : 18:03:01
|
| It would appear that Report Builder is far too limited to produce ad-hoc mailmerge letters. You can insert text boxes, but they do not appear on every page, and you cannot paste individual fields into text messages, i.e. "Dear <<custname>>," etc. Formatting in Report Builder is really crude. Easy, which is important, but too crude to produce a report in letter format.It's too bad, too-- as it's pretty close. If it was open source it probably wouldn't be too hard to hack mailmerge into it...--Sync |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
Report Builder capable of Mail Merge?