Edit Saved Microsoft Word Document in C#/Asp.net

Question

I am not sure if this is possible and every where I have searched, I cannot find a clear answer. I am saving a Microsoft Word document to a SQL Server 2008 table. Basically just converting the file to a Byte[] and writing that to the table. This word document is a "template" file. The file is a form that the user needs to fill out. What I am wondering, is after reading that file from SQL Server and before opening it up for the user, is there a way to autopopulate some fields in the form for the user? For example, if I know the address of the user already, can I autopopulate the address field in the template for them?

I know that using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word , I can search the document for bookmarks and insert data at the bookmark. However, as far as I know, you cannot use Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word to open a Byte[].

Is there anyway to complete what I was looking for?

Answer 1

If you want to use OpenXML, then you can do it like this,

//Load your byte[] array into memory stream and then 
WordprocessingDocument doc = WordprocessingDocument.Open(stream, true);

You can do what you are trying to achieve using OpenXML without installing word on the server side..More resources on OpenXMl can be found on http://openxmldeveloper.org/ . And the open xml sdk can be downloaded from here .

Answer 2

I think the general steps would be to

1) Save the file to the local hard drive of the user with a file name based on the template but with a .doc extension.

2)Open the file with interop, but keep it invisible.

3)Populate the fields with bookmarks.

4)Show it to the user.