Form letter?
in [Reports]
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From: Linn Kubler on 15 Feb 2010 14:19 Hi, We send out a satisfaction survey each week and I thought I could save my administrative assistant some time by eliminating the mail merge step and just create the form letter out of SSRS. Right from the get-go I'm struggling. What is the best way to add the boiler plate text to the report? Do I simply add a bunch of text boxes? Since this is a survey there are check boxes and numbers to circle and so forth so formatting looks to be complicated. What is the best way to handle that? Is it possible to simply import a Word document? And finally, if these other questions can be answered, how would a make this print on both sides of the paper? This is designed to be a try fold so they return print address information and instructions on the back side. If anyone knows of a tutorial or expamples of this type of report that would be excellent. Thanks in advance, Linn
From: Andrew Karcher [SQL] on 16 Feb 2010 01:58 Linn, Based on your previous post you are on 2005, correct? This is certainly doable. I recently built a statement report much like you receive from a bank or phone company. However, the bad news is that there is no magic wand for this like an import from Word. It is an interesting thought though. With 2008 there is some ability to have different formatting within the same textbox which would probably help a little bit, but yeah this is going to be some work to put together the form and lay everything out. It is not hard, Just will probably be a bit tedious. what you are going to need is a List Control and probably a bunch of text boxes and tables that help lay everything out. You should not have to do anything special to print on both sides. This is going to be a setting on whatever printer you are going to print them out on, nothing on the SSRS side other than to make sure you have two pages. This won't be exactly the same, but a good list report you could take a look at is the Sales Detail Report in the Microsoft Sample Reports. http://msftrsprodsamples.codeplex.com/. Feel free to post here with additional questions or follow up me directly if you need more information. Hope that helps, Andrew Karcher SQL Server MVP On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:19:20 -0600, "Linn Kubler" <lkubler(a)chartwellwisc2.com> wrote: >Hi, > >We send out a satisfaction survey each week and I thought I could save my >administrative assistant some time by eliminating the mail merge step and >just create the form letter out of SSRS. Right from the get-go I'm >struggling. What is the best way to add the boiler plate text to the >report? Do I simply add a bunch of text boxes? > >Since this is a survey there are check boxes and numbers to circle and so >forth so formatting looks to be complicated. What is the best way to handle >that? Is it possible to simply import a Word document? > >And finally, if these other questions can be answered, how would a make this >print on both sides of the paper? This is designed to be a try fold so they >return print address information and instructions on the back side. > >If anyone knows of a tutorial or expamples of this type of report that would >be excellent. > >Thanks in advance, >Linn >
From: Linn Kubler on 16 Feb 2010 16:12 Andrew, Yes we are on 2005 and that is kind of the conclusion I came to also. There is one aspect of this document that I don't think SSRS can handle and that is virtical text. This document is designed as a three-fold letter. When the customer folds it up it has our mailing address on one side so all they have to do is put a stamp on and drop it in a box somewhere. To accomplish this I need to put our mailing address perpendicular to the rest of the text. Do you know of any way to accomplish this? I hunted around but couldn't find anything I thought would work. If I can't do this then they will have to rely on mail merge. Thanks, Linn "Andrew Karcher [SQL]" <akarcher(a)claritycon.com> wrote in message news:94fkn5156cjlpavrnjaqf6urumd1rtc09p(a)4ax.com... > Linn, > > Based on your previous post you are on 2005, correct? > > This is certainly doable. I recently built a statement report much > like you receive from a bank or phone company. However, the bad news > is that there is no magic wand for this like an import from Word. It > is an interesting thought though. > > With 2008 there is some ability to have different formatting within > the same textbox which would probably help a little bit, but yeah this > is going to be some work to put together the form and lay everything > out. It is not hard, Just will probably be a bit tedious. > > what you are going to need is a List Control and probably a bunch of > text boxes and tables that help lay everything out. You should not > have to do anything special to print on both sides. This is going to > be a setting on whatever printer you are going to print them out on, > nothing on the SSRS side other than to make sure you have two pages. > > This won't be exactly the same, but a good list report you could take > a look at is the Sales Detail Report in the Microsoft Sample Reports. > http://msftrsprodsamples.codeplex.com/. > > Feel free to post here with additional questions or follow up me > directly if you need more information. > > Hope that helps, > Andrew Karcher > SQL Server MVP > > On Mon, 15 Feb 2010 13:19:20 -0600, "Linn Kubler" > <lkubler(a)chartwellwisc2.com> wrote: > >>Hi, >> >>We send out a satisfaction survey each week and I thought I could save my >>administrative assistant some time by eliminating the mail merge step and >>just create the form letter out of SSRS. Right from the get-go I'm >>struggling. What is the best way to add the boiler plate text to the >>report? Do I simply add a bunch of text boxes? >> >>Since this is a survey there are check boxes and numbers to circle and so >>forth so formatting looks to be complicated. What is the best way to >>handle >>that? Is it possible to simply import a Word document? >> >>And finally, if these other questions can be answered, how would a make >>this >>print on both sides of the paper? This is designed to be a try fold so >>they >>return print address information and instructions on the back side. >> >>If anyone knows of a tutorial or expamples of this type of report that >>would >>be excellent. >> >>Thanks in advance, >>Linn >>
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