Project Description:
The project is to build a utility that can take an Excel input file and create a directory book.
I have a database extract that comes to me in an Excel format. The data is somthing like a company profile (name, location(s), management info, company info, technologies, etc.). I need a utility written that I can point at my extract file, it takes the data and:
1) Creates either a Word or PDF document that has the appropriate formatting (example: bolded header for company name and field names with the data --- Address, Telephone, Email, etc.)
2) The utility needs to allow me to create the above into several different sections. For example, the first section will be a simple alphabetical list of companies, the second section will have them sorted by location.
3) Three indexes (name and page number where found) need to be created based on: alphabetical order, the industries they work in, and the technologies they support.
4) Each page in the sections and indexes should have a header that says what is on the page (for example, Sorted By Name, Sorted By Location, Industry Cross Reference, Technology Cross Reference).
5) I should be able to enter a footer (for example, 2008 Edition)
6) A Table of Contents needs to be created based all of the above.
7) The utility needs to be smart enough to know when the amount of space used on a page is completed to insert insert page breaks. Data from one listing CANNOT be split across pages.
I don't care what it's written in, I just need to know how to run the darn thing! A GUI would be nice but I'm happy to run a script with some parameters.
