[thelist] Creating MSWord doc and converting to PDF on the fly via ASP

[Scott Webster]

Hi Joel

: finding scraps of the answer. The scenario: visitor accesses a secure page,
: fills in the form, a Word document is populated with the correct info
: *including a watermark* and a PDF is created for the visitor to download (or
: it is e-mailed to them; exact delivery details aren't critical.) The Word
: document is optional; if we can go straight from web form to watermarked
: PDF, that's great.
:
: Any linkage to tutorials/info/whatever appreciated. If you know of an
: off-the-shelf package, we'd rather buy than build if the price is right.

1.    Use Word to create your pretty form. Export it to PDF.
2.    Open your PDF Form with Acrobat and insert the relevant form fields.
3.    Use a product like ActivePDF Toolkit to populate the fields via a WS.

You will need to purchase Acrobat to modify and add form fields to your PDF,
but I can assure you you'll use PDF for a lot of other things. You could
probably
populate the PDF form on the web-server using the free FDFToolkit from Adobe,
but the ActivePDF is a lot more powerful.

This approach has the benefits of non-techs being able to maintain your PDF
forms,
while the web-developer only needs to know how to manipulate a PDF com tool
and have a list of the relevant form fields in the PDF to know what data to
populate.

Relevant tutorials can be found at either Adobe or ActivePDF sites.
And I'm not associated with any of the above...;)

hth!