Rich Text

Overview

The Rich Text control displays formatted text (static, dynamic or mixed) in 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

You can load RTF or HTML content from an external file. Expand the Data category and click the Load file property's ellipsis button.

In the invoked Open dialog, select the file and click Open.

Rich Text supports the following file formats:

  • RTF
  • DOCX
  • TXT
  • HTML

Edit Content in Place

Double-click a Rich Text control and type text in the invoked in-place editor. A ribbon with text format options appears next to the editor.

Rich Text supports the following edit operations:

  • Undo/Redo History

    The undo/redo history contains the last 100 operations and is available until you exit the in-place edit mode.

  • Clipboard Operations

    You can use clipboard operations (Cut, Copy, and Paste) to manipulate text and images.

  • Hyperlinks

    You can create and modify hyperlinks.

  • Drag and Drop

    Use Drag and Drop 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 and 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.

See the Bind Controls to Data and Use Embedded Fields topics for more information.

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;
  • <ui> tag with type attribute.

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]>