Can I use Word for a report template and have output in PDF?

BLOMASKY

I like the idea of using word to format documents like invoices, purchase orders, etc. etc. However, once I import it into Aware, it seems like my only option is to open it as a work document.

In an ideal world, when I call the report (probably with EXPORT DOCUMENT), it will run the report, save the output as a PDF, then my next statement in Aware will be DISPLAY URL and point to the PDF and now the user can print it, or save it, or email it, or ???

Can I do this?
Can YOU do this?

Thanks
Bruce

kklosson

First, give the report writer a try. If you are printing invoices and standard things like that, it can do it just fine. If you really want to use Word and have PDF output, use a command line pdf tool. I use one for merging pdf output but most are capable of exporting a file to PDF. Once it is produced, you call if from the Display URL action. It requires a bit of directory management, which is simple. But I stress again that the report writer is there for you. Anything else is a workaround of something that already works.

weblike

You can and I could.
i have abandoned this, because transforming from word to pdf is quite slow. I have teste many command line tools which transforms word->pdf. I ended to use 7PDF ( if you search the forum for this I have posted stepbystep how it's done).

As kingsley mentioned I also recommend the writer report and html reports. Much faster in displaying the PDF record on the screen, formthe end user. Also I use a tool which combines the resulted PDF's (resulted from writer&html reports), this tool is also a command line tool which you cand call it from Aware ( the name is PDF Combine PROx).And for html reports I use wkhtmltopdf(opensource but very powerful and fast).
With MS word+7PDF I had a speed of aprox. 10 seconds/displayed PDF on screen, which is quite frustrating for a web application. Whith writer & html , the reports are displayed almost instantly.

Cheers,

mrbdrm

I've took the same route using 7PDF + Word because i can't use AwareIM Report (don't support my language)
downside - slow
upside - you have more option in term of format and functions to use in the Word document
combined with PDFtk to marge PDFs and you are ready 🙂

note: you can use HTML attributes in Word documents now and it will be properly formatted

customaware

mrbdrm wrote
note: you can use HTML attributes in Word documents now and it will be properly formatted

I have found that it only honours limited html attributes such as Bold. But not colours etc. I am using Word 2016.

Have already raised the issue with Support.

hpl123

Yes, the report builder can do a lot nice stuff / power and have some kinks but what doesn´t 🙂. I also use HTML a lot and use the same commandlind tool George (weblike) wrote about earlier in this thread.