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judym0001
judym0001
April 12, 2021
Question

Adding a table/grid to a Word Template without a plugin

  • April 12, 2021
  • 7 replies
  • 0 views

Is it possible to have a data subset populate as a table in a Word Document (template) without using a plugin, but by using the OOTO Word Doc from Template smart service? If so, how do you configure that in the template?

    7 replies

    mikes0011
    mikes0011
    Brainy
    April 12, 2021

    It's doable using WordML injection, which takes a bit of experimentation and somewhat more insight into the back-end workings of Word files than normal.  I created a working version of this years ago and I uploaded my (21.1) cleaned-up export of this a few weeks ago in this thread.  It contains all the needed expression rules as well as a process model with a demonstrative implementation of the doc generation.

    judym0001
    judym0001Author
    April 12, 2021

    Thanks Mike! We just installed the Dynamic Document plugin, but I will check out your solution as well since it would eliminate the need to maintain a plugin. 

    mikes0011
    mikes0011
    Brainy
    April 12, 2021

    Honestly, if you can get the Dynamic Document plugin working for your use case, I would seriously consider just using that, as it will allow for a more maintained and potentially more robust implementation.  The one thing I'm not sure it can do, which mine can, is to create a grid with a dynamic number of columns.  But on the other hand I'd warn that my version has proven unreliable at creating grids that behave properly if you want to take the Word file and turn it into a PDF.  So just FYI.

    As a side note, honestly it's not a realistic expectation to have a system that uses no plug-ins, because there is a lot of really useful and/or irreplacable functionality that's only available via various plugins (people functions, excel tools, PDF tools, etc), and there's almost never any real maintenance burden or other reason to avoid using them.

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