Develop Reference

C# the best way to edit strings MS Word from database?

I will be building a desktop application that should interact with a database, I will need to build an API logically to contact the database remotely and retrieve data from there.
I was given a word file and I will be updating values where the black is the values I'm getting from the database. I will sometimes have to print the file.
I however not sure what's the best way to do this. Do I need to modify the Word file and return it to the default value each time? Should I use reports instead or something else?

I think there are no 'best of the best' practises
You may use DocX from NuGet
You may also get a direct document access using ms office interop word namespace
(afaik)

Editing a Word .docx file from C# application

I'm working on a C# project and I need to open a word doc and do a search/replace on it and save the result for later editing within Word itself.
This is to be a stand alone application and not a Word plugin.
Is there any simple code to get me started?
I've searched and not found anything helpful.
EDIT:
Looks like the nuget package DocX will do what I need.
http://docx.codeplex.com/
http://nuget.org/packages/DocX

If you save the doc as a .xml initially from within word you could open it as plain markup (as opposed to a binary) and do a (very rough) search and replace of the raw doc, you'll have to make sure you didn't mangle any tags containing the target words, but it would work.
You'll preserve all formatting and will be able to open/redistribute it as normal in word, the .xml is basically just an uncompressed .docx .
Edit: Giving this is a possible easy solution, not necessarily saying it's the best idea.

with Open XML you can open and manipulate a word document.

Creating word documents within a c# application?

I've been searching on ways to create letters using a C# Windows Form application in Visual Studio based on information from a local SQL server. I've seen some other topics but each answer seems to be really different.
My knowledge is pretty basic about this and wouldn't mind a step in the right direction. Is it actually possible? is there a better solution rather than creating word documents?
I only really need to be able to create a word document which has some text and and tables is this possible?

If you are creating a document of same kind with different data then use a Word template (.dotx) and use content controls or bookmarks in the document.
Advantage: Saves your time in manipulating with formatting and alignment in the document
Then use Open XML to just replace your content controls or bookmarks with the values.
Advantage: You dont need Word Interop assemblies to be deployed. Faster and recommended by Microsoft.

Depending on your needs, you could either simply copy a pre-existing file, or if you need to modify the document from code, you can use Microsoft Office Automation. (see C# office 2010 automation)

How to read metadata information from docx documents?

what I need to achieve is to have a word document template(docx), which will contain Title, Author name, Date, etc.
This template then will be used by users to complete it. I need to create a c# program, that will take in the docx file and read all the information of interest(title, name, date, ..).
So my questions are:
How do I put the metadata into the template saying: this is Title, this is Date, this is Name, etc? (not programatically)
How do I programmatically read that information?

One way to approach this would be to use Content Controls. In Office, you can create your template, and then for each of your respective inputs of interest you can place one of these controls. They're under the Developer tab in Office.
After inserting your controls you'll need for each of them to have a unique name. Office will let them all have the same name, but you'll need to uniquely identify all of them in your template document.
You now need to get the data that's input in to these controls. Again, there's likely to be some better solutions but Eric White has all kinds of great OpenXML stuff, and so here's one of his: Iterating over Content Controls
I think there's problems with finding content controls nested within a table. So, if you do that, then I think you have to specifically loop over the elements of the table to find content controls within.
Also, you're probably going to want to save a .docx from your .doct file, which I don't think there's any built-in "one-liner" method in OpenXML; however, you can create a new Word document, and then write the file stream of the template in to the newly created docx file. Again, of course, there may be better solutions out there.
Have you been here? There's lots of good stuff:
Introduction to OpenXML
Additionally, Eric has been releasing more and more videos on the OpenXML YouTube channel

1) how do I put the metadata into the template saying: this is Title,
this is Date, this is Name, etc? (not programatically)
You could do that on Info tab in MS Word 2010 as shown below:
2) how do I programmatically read that information?
Once you created your document (or template) you could always look inside it with Open XML SDK 2.0 Productivity Tool (wich is installed with OpenXML SDK) to see where (what classes to use) to get/set some information from/to document.
Also I think this post might help you to solve your task:
Add and update custom document properties in a docx
UPDATE:
Hi Dave,
Please have a look at this MSDN Article - Retrieving Application Properties from Word 2010 Documents by Using the Open XML SDK 2.0
Hope this is exactly what you are looking for.

All OpenXML documents have built in core Metadata that will do what you need through System.IO.Packaging. Once you open the word file using the open xml sdk in c#, you can get to these values via the PackageProperties class. There are 11 Properties you can use.
You "encourage" your user to enter the metadata using Word's Document Information Panel (DIP).
You can force this on by default when they open your template, by a setting in the Developer Toolbar for the template. See the following article on how to set this in your template.
I wrote a quick Windows Form app that displays this information using open xml sdk call to the PackageProperties of the Word file that is displayed above.
Here is the full solution with the sample word file included.
Hope this helps.

Databinding in existing XPS document

I have an existing XPS file that I would like to use as a template and possibly bind data to it. I have tried several methods, but cannot seem to get it to work.
Does anyone have any experience altering an existing XPS file to add data at runtime and then print or save?
Any help is appreciated.

XPS documents conform to the Open XML standard. There is an SDK for working with these docs. Here is a How-to article by Beth Massi: "Accessing Open XML Document Parts with the Open XML SDK".
Since you are working with the internal doc structure you might also check out 'Open XML Package Editor" which lets you explore the doc with Visual Studio. Here is another How-to by Beth Massi: "Handy Visual Studio Add-In to View Office 2007 Files".
+tom

it's a bit of a challenge to do this with XPS, but it is possible.
You can do this with our NiXPS SDK.
I've posted an example on my blog a while ago:
XPS variable data example
Regards,
Nick

Bindings are evaluated during the process of writing to an XPS document. So you can't set up a {Binding} in a FixedDocument, Write that FD to an XpsDocument, and expect to get that original FD back again when you next open that saved doc.
Also, the standard XpsWriter does convert everything into Glyphs on canvases, so you can't, say, a textbox in the original and expect to be able to find it after its been saved to a document.
I've never used the NiXPS libraries, so if Nick says it can be done you might want to check it out.
One last possibility--You can create placeholders in a form that you will be able to find later. They'd have to be text (something like [[{{FORMFIELDHERELOL}}]]) with some kind of delimiter scheme to differentiate the text from everything else. You could then go spelunking in the XML looking for text that fits the delimeter pattern and switch out those glyphs for your binding text. Of course, the issue with THAT is that if you aren't putting X chars in place of X chars you might find you have to do some repositioning. As its all glyphs on canvas this might be slightly harder than, say, threading a needle with a shoelace.