Does anyone know if there anything really useful you can do with this?Would you use it if you needed to regularly paste the results of a DLL calculation into a report?

QuoteOriginally posted by: SonyahDoes anyone know if there anything really useful you can do with this?Would you use it if you needed to regularly paste the results of a DLL calculation into a report?I have found this to be a useful option: do a calculation, print the result in Excel cells, and automate to a predefined Word template, print the report.Another example we use it for is to print out student certificates (course + date + student name) where the data is taken from a SQL Server database. Saves cut and paste. Then the user can use it without having to drag&drop, program etc. Such an automated procedures tend to make an impression and improve productivity as well, it's all automagic.

That sounds really useful - I was thinking that if I wrote results to Excel and charted the data, then I could use automation to paste the graph with some notes/parameters to Word.Do you use the MFC classes or do you write all the automation code from scratch?

QuoteOriginally posted by: SonyahThat sounds really useful - I was thinking that if I wrote results to Excel and charted the data, then I could use automation to paste the graph with some notes/parameters to Word.Do you use the MFC classes or do you write all the automation code from scratch?We did MFC some time ago, but it might be better to to .NET (what can I say, it is really very very good for all this stuff). Of course you might be tied to legacy code and lose the benefit of .NEt but it is still possible using VB6 and NT and the end result is OK I suppose.These days we use C# and the Automation interfaces to Excel, Corel, GDI++ and other third party packages. The GUI is WinForms which is very nice. It seems that many parties have Automation interfaces.Highly recommended.The end result (report) is very professional and that is important too.Of course you can do the same stuff in VB.NET.

i did some automation with C#.NET and Word. the same type as Cuchulainn did: creating word docs from templates. it's very easy and users loved it

QuoteOriginally posted by: jawabeani did some automation with C#.NET and Word. the same type as Cuchulainn did: creating word docs from templates. it's very easy and users loved itjawa,A small anecdote; i once gave a talk on Excel/VB/Word integration some time ago for about 60 people. They almost brought the house down. The year before I tried C++ on them, no way. I reckon you see the same things.

QuoteOriginally posted by: Cuchulainnjawa,A small anecdote; i once gave a talk on Excel/VB/Word integration some time ago for about 60 people. They almost brought the house down. The year before I tried C++ on them, no way. I reckon you see the same things.I remember when we first did it with C++ in 1998 the coolest part was seeing how the Word report was being created on the screen in front of a user. It sounds silly and childish, but users loved that part especially.

I use VBA in excel to do the same thing - download data, generate charts, fire up word.application, create document - generate pdf. Also works with powerpoint too - good for presentations. Wow factor. But, painfully slow to do anything in VBA - not for real projects.