Part 7: Integrating Excel with Other Applications in Visual C#

Maker QR Code in Visual C# Part 7: Integrating Excel with Other Applications

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Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Inside Out You can also embed an Excel chart by choosing Insert, Object in Word and then selecting Microsoft Excel Chart on the Create New tab of the Object dialog box. Word initially displays a dummy Excel chart that plots food, gas, and motel expenses for the months January through June (see Figure 23-8). Knowing that this is not likely to be exactly the chart you had in mind, it also takes you directly into Edit mode. There you ll find a single worksheet (Sheet1) and a chart sheet containing the dummy chart. You can overwrite the expense-report information on Sheet1 with the data you want to plot.

Figure 23-8. Not knowing what you want to plot, Word generates a dummy expense-report chart when you choose Insert, Object.

Microsoft Word includes a Mail Merge command that facilitates the batch creation of letters, e-mail messages, envelopes, mailing labels, and directories. You can use Excel tables (as well as many other types of data source) to supply names, addresses, phone numbers, and so on, for use by this command. Before you feed data from Excel into Word s Mail Merge Wizard, be sure your Excel worksheet is well structured for this purpose. Your table should meet the following criteria:

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Each field name should be unique. Every piece of information that you want to be able to manipulate separately in your

merge document should be recorded in a separate field. In a form letter, for example, you probably want to work with first and last names separately, so that you can use them both in an address block, but use the last name only (with a salutation or title) at the beginning of the letter. Therefore, your Excel table should have separate fields for first name and last name. 600

To use Word s Mail Merge command, follow these steps:

1 Choose Tools, Letters And Mailings, Mail Merge. 2 The Mail Merge task pane appears. The task pane takes you through six steps. If you re

going to create a mail-merge letter or e-mail message, the third step is the one that involves Excel. When you get there, your task pane will look like this:

Browse. When you browse to your Excel file, the Select Table dialog box that appears (see Figure 23-9) will display an entry for each worksheet. Specify the worksheet that contains the records you want to merge, and click OK.

Figure 23-9. In the Select Table dialog box, you specify the worksheet that contains the records you want to merge.

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and filter the data source. Initially, the check box to the left of each record is selected, which means that all records will be included in your merge. To remove particular items, clear their check boxes. (If you want only a few records, you can start by clicking Clear All. Then you can select just those records you want to include.)

For more efficient filtering, you can use the arrows to the left of each field name. These function like the auto-filter feature in Excel, although they employ a markedly different user interface. To restrict the list to a particular set of records (all those with zip codes greater than or equal to 90000, for example), click the arrow next to any field (it doesn t have to be the field you care about), choose Advanced, and then fill out the Filter And Sort dialog box shown in Figure 23-11.

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Figure 23-11. We ve used the Filter And Sort dialog box to limit our list to zip codes that start with 9.

In the Field field, choose the field that will be your filtering criterion. In the Comparison field, choose a comparison operation, and in the Compare To field, specify a comparison 602