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How can I use DOT files to export data's?

I need to export data into a word doc using ".dot" models, with an application written in asp.net.
Can you give me some links to learn this trick? I'm sure is it possible without any external libraries.
Thanks to the universal knowledge ;-)

I doubt you will able to do this without any extra libraries.
If you are using Word 2007+ format (eg .docx, .dotx) you can use the Open XML SDK. If not, your best bet is probably Aspose.Words

You'll need to have MS Word installed on the machine that will fill the templates (.dot files), and then you can call an instance of Word to do the replacements for you, using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.
If this has to be implemented on a server, you might have a problem. Microsoft advises against installing Office on servers because of stability and reliability issues. http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757 focusses on some of these problems and also mentions some alternatives.

Read content of Word file in C# without using Word Application

I"m looking to read the contents of a Word file on an application running on a webserver - without having word installed. Does a native .net solution for this exist?

Aspose makes a paid solution for doing just about anything with any Office format:
http://www.aspose.com/categories/.net-components/aspose.words-for-.net/default.aspx

There are commercial options too, but that's what OpenXML is all about as long as you are dealing with docx files only. If you need doc files, you will probably need to purchase Aspose's Aspose.Words for .NET.

i have used several SDK, for now, the best is Aspose.words, the openxml sdk 2.5 is also a nice choice, but the api is too low, so if you use openxml sdk that means will be writing more code, and remenber user openxml sdk tool together, it is a nice tool can make coding simple.
you can look this video for a overview:
how to use openxml sdk tool
another choice: GemBox.Document, a commercial option, cheaper than aspose.words.

Generating a Word Document with C#

Given a list of mailing addresses, I need to open an existing Word document, which is formatted for printing labels, and then insert each address into a different cell of the table. The current solution opens the Word application and moves the cursor to insert the text. However, after reading about the security issues and problems associated with opening the newer versions of Word from a web application, I have decided that I need to use another method.
I have looked into using Office Open XML, but I have not found any good resources that provide concrete information on exactly how to use it. Also, someone suggested that I use SQL reporting services, but searching for information on how to use them, lead me nowhere.
Which method do you think is the most appropriate for my problem?
Code samples and links to good tutorials would be extremely helpful.

Thanks for all the answers, but I really did not want to pay for a plugin and using Word automation was out of the question. So I kept searching and eventually, through some trial and error, found some answers.
After throughly searching through Microsoft's site, I found some newer articles on the Office Open XML SDK. I downloaded the new tools and just started going through each them.
I then found the Document Reflector, which creates a class to generate XML code based off an existing Word Document (.docx). Using my Label Template Document and the code this tool generated, I went through and added a loop that appends table cells for each address. It actually proved to be fairly simple and way faster than using Word automation.
So, if you're still using Word automation check out the Office Open XML tools. Their surprisingly extensive for a free download from Microsoft.
Office Open XML SDK 2.0 Download

I use the Words plugin from Aspose.com to do mail merges (programming guide).

You can take a look show 137 and 138 on dnrTV (www.dnrtv.com). In these video's Beth Massi shows how to do some editing and mail merging with OpenXML. She does this by using the Open XML SDK and xml literals in VB. It requires no third party components. Also it doesn't require MS Office to be installed on the machine.
This video inspired me as a C# developed (and no VB experience) to do some XML manipulation in a separate dll in VB. I call into this dll from my C# application.
It is worth a try.

We have the product Aspose that tvanfosson has mentioned. The edition that we purchased works with SQL Reporting Services so it can be used with the scheduler for creating output. It is really a great product and we used in a system that needed to support Korean characters in the final document. It works great and was under $1K with support. Not bad.
The advantage of using a product like this is that you can continue to manage your data and the skill set required to produce the documents is at a level where a variety of developers can support its use.

Vanstee,
If you really want to do this in code, check out this post I just found on Google
http://kellychronicles.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!A0D71E1614E8DBF8!1364.entry

If you are using reporting services cant you just move the information in the word doc into a database table and read it from there, taking word out of the equation?

What is the best way to populate a Word 2007 template in C#?

I have a need to populate a Word 2007 document from code, including repeating table sections - currently I use an XML transform on the document.xml portion of the docx, but this is extremely time consuming to setup (each time you edit the template document, you have to recreate the transform.xsl file, which can take up to a day to do for complex documents).
Is there any better way, preferably one that doesn't require you to run Word 2007 during the process?
Regards
Richard

I tried myself to write some code for that purpose, but gave up. Now I use a 3rd party product: Aspose Words and am quite happy with that component.
It doesn't need Microsoft Word on the machine.
"Aspose.Words enables .NET and Java applications to read, modify and write Word® documents without utilizing Microsoft Word®."
"Aspose.Words supports a wide array of features including document creation, content and formatting manipulation, powerful mail merge abilities, comprehensive support of DOC, OOXML, RTF, WordprocessingML, HTML, OpenDocument and PDF formats. Aspose.Words is truly the most affordable, fastest and feature rich Word component on the market."
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with that company.

Since a DOCX file is simply a ZIP file containing a folder structure with images and XML files, you should be able to manipulate those XML files using our favorite XML manipulation API. The specification of the format is known as WordprocessingML, part of the Office Open XML standard.
I thought I'd mention it in case the 3rd party tool suggested by splattne is not an option.

Have you considered using the Open XML SDK from Microsoft? The only dependency is on .NET 3.5.
Documentation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb448854%28office.14%29.aspx
Download: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=C6E744E5-36E9-45F5-8D8C-331DF206E0D0&displaylang=en

Use invoke docx lib. it supports table data (http://invoke.co.nz/products/help/docx_tables.aspx). More info at http://invoke.co.nz/products/docx.aspx

Have you considered using VB? You could create a separate assembly to populate your document.
I know you are looking for a C# solution, but the XML literal support is one area where XML literal support could help you populate the document. Create a document in Word to server as a template, unzip the docx, paste the relevant XML section you want to change into you VB code, and add code to fill in the parts you wish to change. It's difficult to say from your description if this would meet your requirements but I would suggest looking into it.

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I have a project where I would like to generate a report export in MS Word format. The report will include images/graphs, tables, and text. What is the best way to do this? Third party tools? What are your experiences?

The answer is going to depend slightly upon if the application is running on a server or if it is running on the client machine. If you are running on a server then you are going to want to use one of the XML based office generation formats as there are know issues when using Office Automation on a server.
However, if you are working on the client machine then you have a choice of either using Office Automation or using the Office Open XML format (see links below), which is supported by Microsoft Office 2000 and up either natively or through service packs. One draw back to this though is that you might not be able to embed some kinds of graphs or images that you wish to show.
The best way to go about things will all depend sightly upon how much time you have to invest in development. If you go the route of Office Automation there are quite a few good tutorials out there that can be found via Google and is fairly simple to learn. However, the Open Office XML format is fairly new so you might find the learning curve to be a bit higher.
Office Open XML Iinformation
Office Open XML - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
OpenXML Developer - http://openxmldeveloper.org/default.aspx
Introducing the Office (2007) Open XML File Formats - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338205.aspx

DocX free library for creating DocX documents, actively developed and very easy and intuitive to use. Since CodePlex is dying, project has moved to github.

I have spent the last week or so getting up to speed on Office Open XML. We have a database application that stores survey data that we want to report in Microsoft Word. You can actually create Word 2007 (docx) files from scratch in C#. The Open XML SDK version 2 includes a cool application called the Document Reflector that will actually provide the C# code to fully recreate a Word document. You can use parts or all of the code, and substitute the bits you want to change on the fly. The help file included with the SDK has some good code samples as well.
There is no need for the Office Interop or any other Office software on the server - the new formats are 100% XML.

Have you considered using .RTF as an alternative?
It supports embedding images and tables as well as text, opens by default using Microsoft Word and whilst it's featureset is more limited (count out any advanced formatting) for something that looks and feels and opens like a Word document it's not far off.
Your end users probably won't notice.

I have found Aspose Words to be the best as not everybody can open Office Open XML/*.docx format files and the Word interop and Word automation can be buggy. Aspose Words supports most document file types from Word 97 upwards.
It is a pay-for component but has great support. The other alternative as already suggested is RTF.

To generate Word documents with Office Automation within .NET, specifically in C# or VB.NET:
Add the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word assembly reference to your project. The path is \Visual Studio Tools for Office\PIA\Office11\Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll.
Follow the Microsoft code example
you can find here: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/316384/en-us.

Schmidty, if you want to generate Word documents on a web server you will need a licence for each client (not just the web server). See this section in the first link Rob posted:
"Besides the technical problems, you must also consider licensing issues. Current licensing guidelines prevent Office applications from being used on a server to service client requests, unless those clients themselves have licensed copies of Office. Using server-side Automation to provide Office functionality to unlicensed workstations is not covered by the End User License Agreement (EULA)."
If you meet the licensing requirements, I think you will need to use COM Interop - to be specific, the Office XP Primary Interop Assemblies.

Check out VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office). It is fairly simple to create a Word template, inject an xml data island into it, then send it to the client. When the user opens the doc in Word, Word reads the xml and transforms it into WordML and renders it. You will want to look at the ServerDocument class of the VSTO library. No extra licensing is required from my experience.

I have had good success using the Syncfusion Backoffice DocIO which supports doc and docx formats.
In prior releases it did not support everything in word, but accoriding to your list we tested it with tables and text as a mail merge approach and it worked fine.
Not sure about the import of images though. On their blurb page http://www.syncfusion.com/products/DocIO/Backoffice/features/default.aspx it says
Blockquote
Essential DocIO has support for inserting both Scalar and Vector images into the document, in almost all formats. Bitmap, gif, png and tiff are some of the common image types supported.
So its worth considering.
As others have mentioned you can build up a RTF document, there are some good RTF libraries around for .net like http://www.codeproject.com/KB/string/nrtftree.aspx

I faced this problem and created a small library for this. It was used in several projects and then I decided to publish it. It is free and very very simple but I'm sure it will help with you with the task. Invoke the Office Open XML Library, http://invoke.co.nz/products/docx.aspx.

I've written a blog post series on Open XML WordprocessingML document generation. My approach is that you create a template document that contains content controls, and in each content control you write an XPath expression that defines how to retrieve the content from an XML document that contains the data that drives the document generation process. The code is free, and is licensed under the the Microsoft Reciprocal License (Ms-RL). In that same blog post series, I also explore an approach where you write C# code in content controls. The document generation process then processes the template document and generates a C# program that generates the desired documents. One advantage of this approach is that you can use any data source as the source of data for the document generation process. That code is also licenced under the Microsoft Reciprocal License.

I currently do this exact thing.
If the document isn't very big, doesn't contain images and such, then I store it as an RTF with #MergeFields# in it and simply replace them with content, sending the result down to the user as an RTF.
For larger documents, including images and dynamically inserted images, I save the initial Word document as a Single Webpage *.mht file containing the #MergeFields# again. I then do the same as above. Using this, I can easily render a DataTable with some basic Html table tags and replace one of the #MergeFields# with a whole table.
Images can be stored on your server and the url embedded into the document too.
Interestingly, the new Office 2007 file formats are actually zip files - if you rename the extension to .zip you can open them up and see their contents. This means you should be able to switch content such as images in and out using a simple C# zip library.

#Dale Ragan: That will work for the Office 2003 XML format, but that's not portable (as, say, .doc or .docx files would be).
To read/write those, you'll need to use the Word Object Library ActiveX control:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/wordapplication.aspx

#Danny Smurf: Actually this article describes what will become the Office Open XML format which Rob answered with. I will pay more attention to the links I post for now on to make sure there not obsolete. I actually did a search on WordML, which is what it was called at the time.
I believe that the Office Open XML format is the best way to go.

LibreOffice also supports headless interaction via API. Unfortunately there's currently not much information about this feature yet.. :(

You could also use Word document generator. It can be used for client-side or server-side deployment. From the project description:
WordDocumentGenerator is an utility to generate Word documents from
templates using Visual Studio 2010 and Open XML 2.0 SDK.
WordDocumentGenerator helps generate Word documents both
non-refresh-able as well as refresh-able based on predefined templates
using minimum code changes. Content controls are used as placeholders
for document generation. It supports Word 2007 and Word 2010.
Grab it: http://worddocgenerator.codeplex.com/
Download SDK: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124

Another alternative is Windward Docgen (disclaimer - I'm the founder). With Windward you design the template in Word, including images, tables, graphs, gauges, and anything else you want. You can set tags where data from an XML or SQL datasource is inserted (including functionality like forEach loops, import, etc). And then generate the report to DOCX, PDF, HTML, etc.