We are developing a software (no server application = stand alone software) using .NET and .NET built in Crystal Reports. I understand you have a nice tool that created real word docs from standard reports…
The question is what should I buy from you?
We have about 100 users of our software and one developer needing the your development software.
Please inform me about what I need and its price.
This message was posted using Support 2 Forum
Hi,
Thank you for your interest in Aspose. Could you please describe in details what your task is? What is planned to be converted from what formats to what, and so on. I will help you to make the right choice then. I think that you implied Aspose.Words for Reporting Services when mentioned the “reports to Word” tool; however this product is based on Reporting Services which is a part of Microsoft SQL Server but you are developing a stand-alone software.
Thanks.
So, we are making a “stand-alone” application in C# .NET using .NET built-in Crystal Reports. We also use Microsoft Access in the application. We do not use SQL server.
The application works fine, even the report part using Crystal.
The problem is when you want to save/export the report from Crysal to word it “fails”. Meaning the export does not make a real DOC file (more a text box oriented RTF file).
The export formats we need is Word, PDF and Excel.
PDF and Excel works satisfying today.
So, do you have e.g. a stand alone “dll” we can use to export to real word documents?
//Mattias Klasson
Manager
Somfy AB
Sweden
Thank you for additional information. Yes, we do have such component; this is Aspose.Words. It will allow you to convert RTF files produced by Crystal Reports to a bunch of supported Microsoft Word document formats. Please consider the following article that is dedicated exactly to your task; it neatly shows how easy the implementation is:
https://blog.aspose.com/2007/03/25/71350
You can learn more about Aspose.Words and download an evaluation version by visiting the following pages:
Product page:
https://docs.aspose.com/words/net/product-overview/
Download page:
https://releases.aspose.com/words/net/
Documentation page:
https://reference.aspose.com/words/net/
Please don’t hesitate to ask further questions if you have any.
After downloading the Aspose.Words and trying to figure it out i think that we missunderstand each other.
What we need is ultimatly a way to get good formatted word doc from crystal report or as a workaround generate a pdf or rtf from crystal in a temp folder then generate the doc file with Aspose.Words and delete the tempfile.
Trying to convert a pdf file to doc from Aspose.Words doesn’t work, generates an error then trying to open the file.
“An unhandled exception of type ‘Aspose.Words.FileCorruptedException’ occurred in aspose.words.dll
Additional information: The document appears to be corrupted and cannot be loaded.”
Convert the report first to a rtf file then to doc from Aspose.Words work, but we still got all text in textboxes and the formatting sucks, same formatting as Crystal Reports generates. (see attached test document).
Used Code:
//repDoc is a crystal report document
repDoc.ExportToDisk(ExportFormatType.RichText,@"c:\Temp\test.rft");
Aspose.Words.Document doc = new Aspose.Words.Document(@"c:\Temp\test.rtf");
doc.Save(@"C:\Documents and Settings\Martin Jonsson\Desktop\otto.doc",Aspose.Words.SaveFormat.Doc);
As i understand it, to be able to generate good looking reports and be able to export to pdf, doc and xls we need to create the reports in aspose.words like the example files installed with the demo?
Regards Martin Jonsson
Martin,
Indeed, PDF import is not supported by Aspose.Words. It is not a trivial task and there is no a brisk demand for it from customers.
However, I’m not sure what you expect from Aspose.Words. You mentioned that you did not like the appearance of RTF documents produced by Crystal Reports. Being the developer of Aspose.Words for Reporting Services, I do understand the problem. People expect to get commonly, habitually formatted documents looking naturally. “Naturally” means here “no absolutely positioned items such as textboxes, flow layout instead”. However, the items in original reports are absolutely positioned and conversion to “natural” documents is not trivial. Aspose.Words for Reporting Services supports the AWesomeExport technology that is moving in this direction; currently it allows to convert report tables into “natural” tables in Microsoft Word documents rather than a bunch of textboxes. However, Crystal Reports produces what it produces and neither Aspose.Words nor Aspose.Words for Reporting Services are able to convert Crystal documents to “good looking reports” automatically. Furthermore, the goal of Aspose.Words import/export is to retain the formatting so I’m wondering why you were surprised that the appearance of the documents remained unchanged. If the formatting was changed, then this is a bug that should be fixed.
My advice is not treat textboxes as a disaster. This is just an alternative document style.
If I misunderstood you or missed some point, please let me know.
Crystal Reports can generate documents in various formats including RTF, PDF, HTML and so on.
Whatever RTF is produced by Crystal, it is produced by Crystal. If Crystal uses floating textboxes to represent every paragraph of text - that’s what Crystal does. I’ve heard they actually have two modes: one classical with textboxes and another new mode with normal flow text, albeit it comes out quite different from the original report design.
Crystal Reports has a “closed” design and they do not allow third party vendors such as Aspose to write exporters for report into different formats. For example, if they had an open platform, we could have tried writing a better export to DOC and RTF than they have themselves.
So you cannot expect Aspose.Words to resolve the problem that you don’t like the RTF files generated by Crystal Reports.
One thing Aspose.Words can do for you - convert RTF files into DOC files. That’s what Dmitry thought you wanted to do. This is a common issue - Crystal Reports generates files with the .DOC extension, but the files are not DOC, they are RTF files. If you really want a DOC file, you can use Aspose.Words to convert. But this has to be performed as some sort of an after-step, it cannot be integrated into Crystal Reports.
The other thing that was mentioned here - Aspose.Words for Reporting Services. This is an “export driver” for DOC, RTF and WordML formats that can be used with Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (which has an extensible architecture unlike Crystal Reports). MSSSRS does not have export to DOC, RTF natively, but by using Aspose.Words for Reporting Services one can have it. Aspose.Words for Reporting Services generates DOC and RTF using somewhat similar approach to Crystal Reports using textboxes for most of the content, although we are at the moment working to improve this and use tables and normal flow paragraphs whenever possible.
Let us know if you have more questions.