DocIO
Essential DocIO is a .NET library that can read, write, and modify Microsoft Word files. It features a full-fledged object model similar to the Microsoft Office Automation libraries. It can be used on systems that do not have Microsoft Word installed. Essential DocIO enables users to create richly formatted Microsoft Word reports in Windows Forms, ASP.NET, WPF, ASP.NET MVC, and Silverlight applications.
Essential DocIO can create and consume files based on a wide set of Word .doc file format variants.
Native file format for Word versions 97–2003Docx—Native file format for Doc Version 2007 and 2010.
You can even open a file in one format and save it back in another format.
Essential DocIO is a native .NET library written in C# which allows you to use it in a Windows desktop as well as Web apps, including a native version of Silverlight.
This also provides a much better user experience and performance compared to other solutions available in the market that are wrappers over COM components, libraries ported
from Java, Delphi, etc.
Essential DocIO has been optimized for usage on servers where speed and memory usage are critical. It can easily handle multiple requests for report generation in scenarios
such as Web sites serving reports to hundreds of simultaneous users.
Essential DocIO is also highly optimized to generate Word .doc files with a large amount of data. It is optimized for both low memory usage and speed. It works more than 100 times faster
than MS Word automation and consumes much less memory compared to that of MS Word.
The Silverlight version of the library is a native Silverlight client-side library that off-loads all the processing to the client machine, making it an infinitely scalable reporting
solution for your Web apps.
DocIO is very cost-effective since there are no per-server licensing fees, distribution fees, or royalties involved.
Essential DocIO has thousands of customers who require the generation of millions of Word reports every day in demanding production environments.
Essential DocIO lets you add Microsoft Word's reporting capabilities to your .NET applications within minutes. You can visually design your report with placeholders
called "merge fields" that are similar to those found in Microsoft Word. Essential DocIO can then be used to replace these placeholders during run time with real data and save the
final report to a local file, stream, or even stream to the client browser.
MS Word Forms let you create templates with control place holders to let users enter custom information to fill a form. Essential DocIO lets you fill such forms programatically
with data retrieved from your custom data sources.
Cloning And Merging
Multiple documents can be combined into a single document by utilizing the cloning and merging capabilities of Essential DocIO. This
feature is very useful when dealing with contents from several documents.
Using Essential DocIO, cloning can be done at the section level or paragraph level, wherein sections or paragraphs from various template documents are
combined to construct a new Word document.
Find and Replace
Searching for occurrences of text and replacing them with alternative text or document elements such as tables and images has never been easier. You can also search for
bookmarks and replace them with richly formatted content.
There is full support for setting the font name, font size, font color, font style, etc.
There is also support for paragraph formatting in a document using which the look and feel of the paragraph. as well as its relative positioning
with respect to adjacent paragraphs, can be modified.
Unicode support in DocIO allows you to insert text in various languages.
Essential DocIO also offers support for including special Symbols in any desired section of the document. You can also use symbols from custom fonts, but such fonts should be available in the client machine when the document is opened through Word.
Bullets and Lists
Bulleted and numbered list support is available to create ordered and unordered hierarchical lists in a Word document. Different styling options are also available for such lists.
Built-in Styles can be applied on text as well as Custom Styles can be defined and applied on text.
There are extensive configuration options available to be applied on tables:
Cell margins and paddingCell mergingNested tablesImages within table cellsAbility to insert tables in document header
Essential DocIO provides support for including a table of contents in a document. This feature comes with customization options such as the ability to display page numbers,
hyperlinks, etc. while creating the table of contents. This also allows usage of default or custom heading styles to indicate content headings, specify the number of outline
levels, and the ability to use TableEntryFields to create a table of contents.
Essential DocIO has support for inserting both scalar and vector images into the document, in almost all formats. Bitmap, gif, png, and tiff are some of the common image types supported.
Watermark is a feature in MS Word which enables you to insert a piece of text or graphics behind the document content. Thus watermarks allows us to stamp a document or add a
pleasant background. You can apply a picture or text watermark using Essential DocIO.
Page, Column, and Section Breaks
Essential DocIO has support for creating a document with multiple column layouts. While using columns, often the text in the last column gets rendered with a width
that is inconsistent with the previous columns. But inserting a continuous Column Break will balance the column lengths, providing a professional and finished look
for the document created using Essential DocIO.
Page breaks refer to the end of a page of text. Essential DocIO offers support for including hard or forced page breaks in the Word document.
Word documents can be divided into sections and formatted individually using Essential DocIO.
Headers and Footers including text, images, page numbers, date, etc., can be created for Word documents using Essential DocIO. The headers and footers are normally displayed
at the top and bottom of each page respectively.
Page Numbers could be inserted with formats such as Arabic, uppercase Roman, lowercase Roman, and so on. Essential DocIO also supports restarting page numbers from any section and change the starting page number for each section.
Essential DocIO provides support for including footnotes and endnotes in a document. A footnote is a note of text placed at the bottom of a page. It is normally flagged by a superscript number followed by the text being referenced.
An endnote is a note or reference listed at the end of a text or a major text section. Endnotes differ from footnotes in that they are collected and listed together at the end of a chapter.
Document Settings and Protection
Both the standard and custom document properties can be viewed and modified using Essential DocIO.
DocIO provides support for creating and retrieving document variables in a Word document. These document variables are invisible fields that are used by programmer to store information for future use.
The documents created using Essential DocIO can be protected from being edited. There are protection levels that allow you to only edit comments, form fields or revisions, or disable them all.
Essential DocIO allows you to secure Word documents using password encryption. You can password protect a document while creating one, or decrypt a previously encrypted document on load.
Bookmarks and Comments
Essential DocIO offers support for inserting hidden bookmarks and nested bookmarks into a Word document. The image below illustrates the bookmarks created through DocIO.
Comments can be added to portions of the document elements which will be displayed when the mouse hovers over some particular text.
DocIO can read document content from streams besides reading from an actual .doc file. This helps reading Word document templates saved in databases
without having to create intermediate .doc files.
You can also save d.oc files into streams which helps in scenarios like email-based publishing which lets you send out emails of Word .doc attachments,
for example, without having to write out .doc files to disk.
Combine with Essential PDF to convert a Word document to PDF.
Essential DocIO now supports converting valid XHTML content to Word .doc content. The passed in content should be either XHTML 2.0 or 1.1 compliant.
Essential DocIO supports the conversion of Word .doc file format to HTML format dynamically. Converting to HTML helps users publish formatted content on a Web page or create email messages.
Essential DocIO supports the conversion of Word .doc file format to EPub format dynamically allowing you to publish content that is readable and searchable on many popular digital readers.
Essential DocIO supports the conversion of MS Word documents to Rich Text Format [*.rtf]. You can now open and create MS Word documents and save them in RTF format,
enabling RTF conversion using Essential DocIO with same APIs. This enables transfer of formatted text to another application that does not automatically support Word format.
Essential DocIO allows you to do the reverse of the above as well, converting RTF documents to .doc.
.Doc-formatted files can also be converted to plain text format for consumption in low-end devices.
