trying to work out a REALLY easy way to batch create word reports

[scottyman]

hey guys-
I've created a site to do performance reviews of staff - and am getting loads of lovely CSV files for each staff member - however - the nice easy way of generating reports based purely on numbers is out the window, and need to create Word docs to show lovely charts instead (management requirement)
I'm trying to work out a fast, easy way of batching these reports, and have modified the data so I'm getting new "valid" responses for each question.
i.e. grade staffer 1-5 for performance, or select 6 for can't comment (and stores N/A so it won't stuff up the averages)
70-odd questions, with a dozen or so responses from each question - can generate the charts fine, but need a nice elegant way to batch process this into cute word docs

[schmunk]

Mail Merge?

[scottyman]

no, unfortunately won't play nicely - not to worry - will see how complicated I can make a spreadsheet to autogen it - then hopefully just work out someway to get it out as a word doc

[schmunk]

Originally Posted by scottyman

hey guys-
I've created a site to do performance reviews of staff - and am getting loads of lovely CSV files for each staff member - however - the nice easy way of generating reports based purely on numbers is out the window, and need to create Word docs to show lovely charts instead (management requirement)
I'm trying to work out a fast, easy way of batching these reports, and have modified the data so I'm getting new "valid" responses for each question.
i.e. grade staffer 1-5 for performance, or select 6 for can't comment (and stores N/A so it won't stuff up the averages)
70-odd questions, with a dozen or so responses from each question - can generate the charts fine, but need a nice elegant way to batch process this into cute word docs

Having looked back through this - 70-odd questions? Do you work for the Inquisition?

[Purple]

look in to using VBA macros - you should be able to interchange your data fairly easily without too much fanying around

[scottyman]

was thinking about that - might have a fiddle later on.
if you mean am i working for the (dramatic pythonesque pause) "Spanish Inquisition" - then no - merely an HR company who know what they like, and like to have pretty documents - rather than graphs and charts generated automatically in PHP (which frankly is much easier - considering you're only dealing with arrays) but - getting word documents out of PHP appears harder! and frankly - for something that they'll be running themselves - it's really not worth the tech support time!

[Purple]

seriously VBA - you could have a word document named say "Make reports for dumb people.doc" which when opened, runs a macro that reads your output file and generates lots of word docs using similar (but not that similar) code to
exl = createObject("Excel.appliction")
exl.importFile("CSV output.dat", msoFormatCommaDelimited)
mygraph = exl.createGraph(A, staffoffset, AE, recordlength)
mygraph.makepretty
mydoc = createObject("Word.Document")
mydoc.addShape(mygraph)
mydoc.savefileas("monkeys" + staffname + date)
mydoc.print

look in to the Application class, the createObject function, Collections (the structure of the docs is based on this), and the Shape ob and Shapes collection in word. Good luck