Microsoft KB Archive/301044

= How To Create an Office Document in an ASP Application =

Article ID: 301044

Article Last Modified on 1/17/2007

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APPLIES TO


 * Microsoft Office 2000 Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Office XP Developer Edition
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.01
 * Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5
 * Microsoft Active Server Pages 4.0

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This article was previously published under Q301044





IN THIS TASK
SUMMARY
 * How to Create the Script
 * How to Run the Script
 * How to Try It Again
 * Toubleshooting

REFERENCES



SUMMARY
This step-by-step article discusses how you can create a text-based document with Active Server Pages (ASP) and stream the document to the client using an Office Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type. The text-based format demonstrated in this article is HTML and the document is displayed by using the Excel and Word MIME types. There are several text-based formats that you can use to create Office documents using the same technique presented in this article.

You can create text-based documents for Excel by using the following formats:
 * Comma-separated (.csv)
 * Tab-delimited (.txt)
 * HTML
 * XML (Excel 2002)

Likewise, you can create text-based documents for Word by using the following formats:


 * Text
 * HTML
 * Rich Text Format (.rtf)

How to Create the Script
  Start any text or HTML editor and paste the following code into the editor: <%@ Language=VBScript %> <%  Dim r, Amount, Tax

'Change HTML header to specify Excel's MIME content type. Response.Buffer = TRUE Response.ContentType = &quot;application/vnd.ms-excel&quot; %>      Save the new script as Exceldoc.asp in the virtual root folder of your Web server. The default root is C:\Inetpub\Wwwroot.

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How to Run the Script

 * 1) Start Microsoft Internet Explorer.
 * 2) In the address bar, type http://YourWebServer/ExcelDoc.asp (where YourWebServer is the name of your Web server) and press ENTER.
 * 3) After the table is opened in Excel, examine the results. Note the formatting and the formulas in cells B23 and C23.

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How to Try It Again
Next, modify the script so that the the document opens in Word instead of Excel:

  In the script, modify the MIME type as follows: Response.ContentType = &quot;application/msword&quot; </li> Save the modified document in the virtual root folder of your Web server as Worddoc.asp.</li> Start Internet Explorer and browse to http://YourWebServer/WordDoc.asp (where YourWebServer is the name of your Web server).</li></ol>

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Toubleshooting
Using a text-based format for your Office documents can provide a solution on your Web server that is very scalable and provides good performance. A disadvantage of using text-based formats is that you are limited in the Office features that you can use. Some developers may choose to use Automation for Office document creation; although Automation in a client-side environment gives you the greatest flexibility in exploiting all the features that are available in Office, it can generate some problems for a server-side application. If you find that using a text-based document format does not deliver the level of document creation you need, you may want to see the following Knowledge Base article to determine if Automation might be a solution that is right for you:

257757 INFO: Considerations for Server-Side Automation of Office

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