RTF Export Formatting

[John Pritchard]

I'm exporting reports from VB to .RTF format. The reports
look great in Access BUT when viewed via word:-

1. The bold formatting for my labels has gone - though the
bold formatting for some of my totals (i.e. data) has
remained.

2. ALL the lines have disappeared.

I'm on Access 2k and have tried all the standard export
formats listed but all seem to ignore lines.

Any ideas (not necessarily sticking to .PTF) would be much
appreciated. - Thanks in advance John P.

 

[SA]

John:

What you have found about outputting to RTF has been the way Access has
worked since release 1.1. The issue is that all the graphics and lines are
actually drawing object placed on the report at run time by the Access GDI
print engine. Hence they are not actual text or exportable elements.

There really are only two options currently if you want to retain all the
graphics:

1.) Export to Access' native Snapshot format, which will produce a .snp file
that can be opened with the snapshot viewer.

You can export into a snapshot by specifying the Snapshot Format (*.snp) in
the OutputTo format option.

2.) Print the report to a PDF file, which of course will retain all the
graphics because you are actually printing the report. These file are
viewable with the standard Adobe Acrobat reader. If you don't have the
Acrobat printer drivers, there are many in-expensive ones to check out (e.g.
Win2PDF (www.daneprairie.com), pdfFactory (www.fineprint.com), Virtual PDF
(www.Go2PDF.com) etc.

If you need to create the PDF files via code the our PDF and Mail Library
for Access can do that quite easily.

 

[John P]

Thanks Steve - now I know a bit more !

I'm an old unix / 'C'/ Ingres programmer and finding
Access both brilliant and (like this sort of thing)
backward and restrictive. I think I'll have more luck
with .PDF as I need something most people will have on
their PC's. Being lazy here but can you tell me how to
create a sample .PDF so I can look at the results ? -
though in the end I'd like to generate the files from
inside my app so any more info on your library would be
welcome too. Don't have any budget myself - but know a man
who does AND I'm keen to prove that programmers are useful
people!!

Kind regards

John P.

-----Original Message-----
John:

What you have found about outputting to RTF has been the way Access has
worked since release 1.1. The issue is that all the graphics and lines are
actually drawing object placed on the report at run time by the Access GDI
print engine. Hence they are not actual text or exportable elements.

There really are only two options currently if you want to retain all the
graphics:

1.) Export to Access' native Snapshot format, which will produce a .snp file
that can be opened with the snapshot viewer.

You can export into a snapshot by specifying the Snapshot Format (*.snp) in
the OutputTo format option.

2.) Print the report to a PDF file, which of course will retain all the
graphics because you are actually printing the report. These file are
viewable with the standard Adobe Acrobat reader. If you don't have the
Acrobat printer drivers, there are many in-expensive ones to check out (e.g.
Win2PDF (www.daneprairie.com), pdfFactory

(www.fineprint.com), Virtual PDF

 

[SA]

John:

1.) You can download our library (which requires separate PDF drivers) from
our web in the developer tools section (line below the sig.)

2.) A number of the supported drivers are quite inexpensive and you can
download most of them and use then on a trial basis without registration
(they just add a tag to the PDF file.) See the links on our web.