How to achieve relative positioning in DOC prints?
One of my customer needs to produce a report containing many tables and graphs (already generated automatically from the DB) but instead of having a .PDF report would like to have a .DOC one, in order to be able to insert comments pertaining to the graphs.
Some experiments with .DOC results in RB were not really satisfying since the structure of the obtained report is a bit fragile:
1. I put an image in a subreport and set its position relative to a RTF text: if I add more text in the RTF field it goes over the image instead of moving it forward. Of course the user can move it by hand but I'd like to know if this can be automatic
2. I put a tableGrid in a subreport and set its position relative to a RTF text: if I add more text in the RTF field, the textboxes in the cells of the grid move on correctly but the grid itself is left behind and is difficult to move since it's made form individual lines
Is it possible to configure the output so that adding text has the effect of displacing everything below the text itself without manual intervention from the end user?
This is an example rtm
This is a video showing my problem
Some experiments with .DOC results in RB were not really satisfying since the structure of the obtained report is a bit fragile:
1. I put an image in a subreport and set its position relative to a RTF text: if I add more text in the RTF field it goes over the image instead of moving it forward. Of course the user can move it by hand but I'd like to know if this can be automatic
2. I put a tableGrid in a subreport and set its position relative to a RTF text: if I add more text in the RTF field, the textboxes in the cells of the grid move on correctly but the grid itself is left behind and is difficult to move since it's made form individual lines
Is it possible to configure the output so that adding text has the effect of displacing everything below the text itself without manual intervention from the end user?
This is an example rtm
This is a video showing my problem
Comments
This is currently a restriction of the RTF format that ReportBuilder exports to for .DOC files. RTF does not support having graphics and text in the same "layer". Graphics are given a static pixel location where as Text is placed in the text grid using lines and tabs. We will research this further and see if there is a way with the newer versions of Office to work around this however for now it is a limitation of the format.
Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com