Mail Merge with PHP and Microsoft Word

[beginneratphp]

Hello,

 

I have an interface which allows people to manage and add customers. Each customer also has a category, for example 'Builders' I need a way of being able to do a mail merge to all clients with a selected category which is initialised from the web interface.

 

For example, at the moment I can connect to MySQL and get all customers and if I go slightly further I could create a filter to do just what I need from within word. However, I need to be able to have the user choose which category from within their browser then click a button and it automatically does this filter.

 

I was thinking maybe somehow I could export all users in a category to a CSV file and then have a mail merge doc setup which automatically pulled data from this each time the document was loaded - this would be OK I suppose if a word file could be opened which automatically had the desired filter.

 

But how?!?!

 

P.S. Noooob Alert. ???

[roopurt18]

We have a server application based on Visual FoxPro that performs mail merge with MS Word where I work.  My boss recently told me he'd like our clients to be able to export their data to our web site and perform the mail merge there.  My boss and the other programmer immediately became engrossed in how to do the actual merge on the server.

 

"Do we have the client upload a word document?  How will they know the fields when they're creating it? etc. etc."

 

Then I asked a profound question:

"Why do we need to use MS Word?"

 

"So they can format it."

 

"That's it?"

 

"Yah, basically."

 

"Then our problem is solved.  We don't need MS Word at all.  We can put a rich text control on the server and allow them to create their merge documents right there on the server.  We just allow them to save each as a template and when they perform their mailings they can type up a new body or select from an existing template.  Simple."