Create Word document on server and offer Client as Download - vb.net

Question

Hi iam creating a Word document like:
Dim oApp As Word.Application
Dim oDoc As Word.Document
oApp = CreateObject("Word.Application")
oDoc = oApp.Documents.Add
Dim rng As Word.Range = oDoc.Range(0, 0)
rng.Font.Name = "Verdana"
rng.Font.Size = 16
.......
...............
oApp.Visible = True
oDoc = Nothing
oApp = Nothing
This works perfect on my local machine. But if i put my Code on Webserver it of course does not work.
My Question is: What i have to do, that the Word document gets created on the server and offer the created document to the client as Download.
Can someone help me with that? Thanks!!

Answer 1

I think they way you are currently doing this requires Microsoft Word (Or at least the Interop components) to be present on the server to allow this.
Perhaps a better approach would be to create a PDF on the fly and offer that to the client
alternatively perhaps this approach would work or this?
EDIT:
Also please see how-to-generate-word-documentdoc-docx-in-asp-net
EDIT:
This code snippet will allow you to stream the file down to the client
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream())
{
// Create Document
using (<declare document>))
{
//create your document here
// Stream it down to the browser
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document";
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=HelloWorld.docx");
mem.Position = 0;
mem.CopyTo(Response.OutputStream);
Response.Flush();
Response.End();
}
}

Answer 2

Just saw this...
I have managed to get Word running on a server (Apache). You must run Apache under a user account that can run Word. Also if you use Office 32-bit you must run Apache 32-bit. Only one instance of Word runs at one time. However, Word can have multiple documents open at the same time. I developed an addin that I put in Word's startup directory so it is available for each document. In the AutoExec macro I trigger the code that reads a job queue and generates the document. All this is run from the web using AJAX and PHP.