Exporting to Word/RTF: how to eliminate boxes around text

[Ina]

Through ePortfolio 8.5, I either export (after saving as crystal reports format) or save as word /rtf format. Both ways, however, both the word and rtf documents have little boxes surrounding ALL text. Each database or text box 'field' has a frame(?) around it. Anyone know how to make it all just text without boxes. I also tried exporting to text but it does not meet our needs.

Thanks,
Ina

 

[synapsevampire]

I don't get these boxes you speak of using CE 8.5.

-k

 

[Naith]

Check what export dll you're using. Using crxf_wordw.dll (Word (Exact) export), I get a clean export to Word.

You can download this dll from Crystal's support site.

Naith

 

[Ina]

Thanks Naith! I got a similar reply from CD but a word of caution too:
"using the crxf_wordw.dll gives you the rtf formatted text when exporting to word.
However, if you were to disable the crxf_wordw.dll and crxf_wordw_res_en.dll
by renaming them to crxf_wordw.old and crxf_wordw_res_en.old, (then
restarting the CE servers), this forces CE to use the older (for backward
compatibility) u2fwordw.dll. When using the u2fword.dll I got the standard
word doc with not text boxes.

The reason behind this is that the newer crxf_wordw.dll (in "Products"
vision) is closer to WYSIWYG formatting then what they had before, the
columns and text are better lined up, plus the newer code is Uni-code
compliant.

Going forward you need to decide what is best, as eventually with future
releases of CE and CR, the u2f* export format is not available beyond
CE/CR 8.5 release."

Ina

 

[Madawc]

Where I work, Crystal 8.5 has just been upgraded with the latest fixes and DLLs. This means that it does successfully export to Word, but also that each field is treated as a text box.

If I've understood correctly, this is a feature of the new DLL. But for some reason, these text boxes default to a visible border when exported to Word at Ina's site.

This could be down to something in the reports, or to the default values for Word. I can't advise further, since I'm not an expert on Word or DLLs. But the new type are much better for most purposes and it would be regrettable not to be able to use them.

Madawc Williams
East Anglia
Great Britain

 

[Ina]

Madawc,

No, the text boxes do not have visible borders. However, if you try to hightlight a chunk of information, you can't because of boxes around text. Visibly, it is not a problem, only copying or selecting is impediment.

So this issue is closed and our users will just have to tolerate not being able to select the text and not having 'real' word documents.

Ina

 

[Naith]

I know what you mean re 'boxes'.

Each field is treated as a seperate entity, so when you click a field, you will get a semi-shaded outline of a box around the field illustrating the co-ordinates you gave it in Crystal.

However, this should not stop you from highlighting the text. Double-click on a field, or even click inside the box when it appears and drag your mouse to the bottom of the page, and the entire area you've encompassed should become highlighted.

Naith

 

[princessinthetower]

I recently encountered this annoyance. One solution is to highlight the entire document and Ctrl Q. This eliminates all the frames at once. You sacrifice whatever formatting you have on the paragraphs but the text is in one editable piece. If you have to edit the document and not just print it as is, this might help.

 

[Madawc]

I tried Infobabe's excellent suggestion, [Crtl] A followed by [Crtl] Q. It makes the text useable, but data in columns gets spread into a long line of paragraphs.

I also found a way of restoring it. In a report with nine columns, I selected the dispersed data and then used Word's text-to-table function, choosing 9 as the number of columbs. This turned it into a neat table.

I was even able to go further, converting it back from table to text, but this time choosing to separate the text with tabs rather than paragraph marks.

Hope this is useful.

Madawc Williams
East Anglia
Great Britain

 

[tomgao]

that takes a great deal of time is there another solution this frame is very annoying