Edit structured data in MS Word

Question

I’m faced with the task to give business users the possibility to edit generic structured data in Microsoft Word 2007.

The structure of the data (an xml representation of a form) and the data is accessed through web services.

I believe that the solution is VSTO, but have no experience with it. So I’m looking for design advice to choose the right way to address this task. This is the flow:

1. User opens Word
2. User is presented with a list of “documents” (not word documents but structured data items) to edit. The content of the list is retrieved from a web service
3. The user select a document
4. The user is presented with a restricted word document generated based on the xml representation of a form. The can document consist of dropdowns, textboxes, rich texts, images etc.
5. The user edits the form and saves the word document. This results in a call to a web service that saves the data on the server.

Any input on how to approach this task is welcome…

Answer 1

Have a look at content controls and custom XML data binding. There are many tutorials out there. If you have a specific problem feel free to add that to your question.