Printing HTML pages directly from browsers usually does not give the best printing output, compared to output from word processors such as Microsoft Word. For web-based systems that generate letters, reports and documents, an output that looks authentic and original is very important. Furthermore, printing output directly from browsers is usually dependant on the browser's configuration. Therefore web-based applications may face difficulties in giving the best printing output especially when dealing with large user base.

This article provides a guideline on how to generate documents and letters in MS Word format using a pre-defined template. My customer (a government agency) required for Reminder Letters to be generated automatically in MS Word format from the Loan Management System that I delivered to them. Using this approach, they can generate a Reminder Letter for each loan which then can be printed nicely and saved for future reference.

This solution can be accomplished using COM extension. Please note that the server running this code MUST have MS Word installed.

Lets start with the big picture. This is how it works:

This step is actually simple, all we need is a MS Word document (*.doc) that contains the sample output and Bookmarks.

To create a Bookmark in a MS Word document, click on Insert/Bookmark. You can highlight a word or sentence and make them a Bookmark. In this code, we will substitute the Bookmark with the actual value, therefore the word you highlighted and saved as a Bookmark will be substituted.

A Bookmark name can only contain letters, numbers and underscores. To see all of bookmarks in the document, click on Tools/Options and check Bookmarks under Show group in the View tab.

The code we use in the next section just substitutes a specified bookmark with text, therefore the formatting, images, tables and etc will not be lost.