How can I generate a markup of a text file

[ziggle]

Hi folks,

I have created a VB routine that processes some accounting records that exist as text files. No problem. I have generated a report and people are all happy. However, there is one request that I have not been able to honor at this point. They would like the input text files modified in some way to mark the text fields that I used in the text files to generate the reports. Today they manually go through and, with a pen on paper, circle all the fields they used to generate the report. I would like to automate this process.

Any thought on how I could generate a version of the input file with the text fields I used marked in some way, like with colored characters. I have thought about HTML. The folks here like to work with Word. Any thoughts on how to create a Word-readable file with colored text that is not HTML? RTF?

Zig

 

[GlennUK]

Can I ask why you can't create an Excel document for this? Why use Word?

 

[ziggle]

Hi GlennUK,

They are trying to come up with an application that strictly works out of Excel. While they can use Word, they are MUCH more comfortable with Excel. They want to hit a button in Excel and have the data analyzed, the report generated, and markups put into a special directory.

I may have just got it working. At this point, I have used VBA to output the accounting data to a file with an RTF header and with every line terminated with a "\par". I marked every data item used with red color. From Excel, I have printed the RTF file to a PDF generator and everything looks good.

Thanks for looking at my question.

Zig