Rich Text¶
Overview¶
The Rich Text control showcases formatted text, which can be static, dynamic, or a combination of both, within a report.
To add this control to a report, drag the Rich Text item from the Toolbox onto the report's Design Surface.
Load Content from a File¶
To load RTF or HTML content from an external file, navigate to the Data category and click the ellipsis button next to the Load file property.
In the Open dialog that appears, choose the file you want to load and click Open.
Rich Text supports the following file formats:
- RTF
- DOCX
- TXT
- HTML
Edit Content in Place¶
To input text into a Rich Text control, double-click on it and begin typing in the in-place editor. You'll see a ribbon with text formatting options appear next to the editor.
Rich Text supports various edit operations:
- Undo/Redo History: The undo/redo history stores the last 100 operations and remains available until you exit the in-place edit mode.
- Clipboard Operations: You can manipulate text and images using clipboard operations such as Cut, Copy, and Paste.
- Hyperlinks: Rich Text enables you to create and modify hyperlinks.
- Drag and Drop: You can use Drag and Drop functionality to move images and text within the editor.
Note: The legacy Rich Text does not provide a ribbon with text format options. Its in-place editor allows you to enter only plain text. Bind the control to a data field that provides RTF or HTML content to display formatted text.
Bind to Data¶
Click the Rtf Expression or Html Expression option's ellipsis button to invoke the Expression Editor. Use this editor to bind the control to a data field or construct a complex binding expression with two or more data fields.
You can use HTML formatted text that contains markup tags to define text appearance. Click the Html Expression option's ellipsis button. For example, enter this text in ' quotes ' in the invoked Expression Editor.
Drag and drop a numeric or text field from the Field List onto the Rich Text control to bind it to this field.
The Rich Text also enables you to merge data fields and static content in its text.
Markup Text¶
Supported Tags¶
The table below lists the supported HTML tags. External links are processed for inline pictures and style sheets (CSS files). The ID and Class attributes are interpreted for all tags, including the unlisted ones. These attributes are used to specify a style for content within a certain tag
| Tag | Attributes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| a | dir | |
| b | dir | |
| base | ||
| basefont | size color face dir | |
| big | dir | |
| blockquote | dir | |
| br | dir | |
| center | dir | |
| code | dir | |
| del | cite datetime | |
| div | page-break-before page-break-after page-break-inside background-color border (CSS) dir | Only the always property value is supported for the page-break-before tag. |
| em | dir | |
| font | size color face dir | |
| h1-h6 | align dir | |
| head | ||
| html | ||
| hr | align color noshade size width | |
| i | dir | |
| ins | cite datetime | |
| img | align src height width | If the align attribute is not specified, the image is considered as inline. |
| li | type value dir | |
| link | href type media dir | |
| meta | ||
| ol | type value align dir | |
| p | align dir | |
| script | Text inside this tag is ignored. | |
| small | ||
| span | ||
| strike | dir | |
| strong | dir | |
| style | ||
| sub | dir | |
| sup | dir | |
| table | align bgcolor border bordercolor cellpadding cellspacing dir width | The dir attribute reorders table columns. |
| td | align bgcolor bordercolor colspan height nowrap rowspan text-align valign width | The align tag is supported in the Internet Explorer only. The Rich Text control's interpretation of the bordercolor attribute is different from the HTML browser. |
| th | any allowed | |
| tr | align bgcolor bordercolor height text-align valign | The align attribute is supported in the Internet Explorer only. |
| title | Text inside this tag is ignored. | |
| u | dir | |
| ul | dir |
Unsupported Tags¶
- < base> tag with href attribute;
- < div> tag with border, align and float CSS attribute;
- < li> tag with list-style-image CSS attribute;
- < margin> tag;
- < tab> tag;
- < table> tag with cols attribute;
- < td> tab with bordercolor and nowrap attributes;
- !important declaration;
- word-wrap and break-word css properties;
- css3 shapes;
Export to Excel¶
When a report is exported to XLS or XLSX, the following rich-text content is converted from rich-text controls into Excel-native rich-text content:
| HTML Tags and RTF Equivalents | |
|---|---|
| Text format | < b>, < i>, < u>, < s>, < strong>, < em> |
| Line break | < br/> |
| Non-breaking space | & nbsp; |
| Font | < font face=[font name]> |
| Font size | < font size=[font size]> |
| Foreground color | < font color=[color]> |