Features in Essential DocIO

Advanced Mail-Merge Capabilities

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.

Microsoft Word Template with Merge Fields Designed Using Microsoft Word

Output Document Generated as a Result of the Merge Fields

Rich Object Model for Document Manipulation

The extensive object model can be used to generate richly formatted Word documents (purely using code) or to load an existing document and manipulate it. For example, you could load a document and look for all occurrences of numbers within tables and format them as currency, or even merge several Word documents into one.

Conversion to Other Document Formats

With Essential DocIO you can easily convert your documents to other commonly used formats like PDF, HTML, RTF, and EPUB.

Word Document and the Converted PDF

Advanced Find and Replace Functionality

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.

Security Features

Secure the data in your reports by encrypting it with a password, thus making it impossible for anyone to view the document without the password.

Most Advanced Component in the Market

Essential DocIO was one of the first Word manipulation libraries available for the .NET platform when it was released in 2006. Over the years the constant feedback from our customers has helped us transform it into the most advanced Word reporting library available in the market today. Some of the features available include text formatting, paragraphs, sections, tables, headers, footers, comments, page breaks, attachments, form fields, watermarks, tables of contents, encryption, Unicode text, right-to-left text support, hyperlinks, bookmarks, and much more.

Word Document with Text Aligned Right-To-Left

Word Document with Watermark Created Using DocIO.

Word Document with Table Styles Applied Using DocIO.

Blazing Fast Performance

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. The Silverlight version of the library is a pure Silverlight client-side library that off-loads all the processing to the client machine making it an infinitely scalable reporting solution.

Native .NET Component

Essential DocIO is a pure .NET library written in C#, which provides a much better user experience and performance compared to wrappers that are built using COM components, libraries ported from Java, Delphi, etc.

Silverlight Library

Essential DocIO was the first native Silverlight document manipulation library available in the market. Your Silverlight applications can generate reports even in offline mode.

Compatible with Microsoft Word Versions 97 to 2010

Essential DocIO can create and consume Word reports in .doc (native file format for Word versions 97-2003) and .docx (native file format for Word versions 2007–2010) file formats. DocIO can also create reports in formats like HTML, RTF, EPUB, and PDF, ensuring that your users will be able to view the reports even if they do not have Microsoft Word installed on their systems.

Proven, Reliable Solution

Essential DocIO has thousands of customers who require the generation of millions of Word reports every day in demanding production environments.

No Server Deployment Fees

DocIO is very cost-effective since there are no per-server licensing fees or royalties applicable.

Compatible with Microsoft Word Versions 97 to 2010

Essential DocIO can create and consume files based on a wide set of Word .doc file format variants.

Native file format for Word versions 97–2003
Docx—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.

Native .NET Component

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.

Blazing Fast Performance

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.

No Server Deployment Fees

DocIO is very cost-effective since there are no per-server licensing fees, distribution fees, or royalties involved.

Proven, Reliable Solution

Essential DocIO has thousands of customers who require the generation of millions of Word reports every day in demanding production environments.

Mail Merge

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.

Microsoft Word Template with Merge Fields Designed Using Microsoft Word

Output Document Generated as a Result of the Merge Fields

Form Filling

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.

Programmatic Form Filling

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.

Cloning and Merging multiple documents

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.

Text Formatting

There is full support for setting the font name, font size, font color, font style, etc.

Different Text Formatting Styles

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.

Paragraph Formatting

Unicode support in DocIO allows you to insert text in various languages.

Unicode Characters inserted using DocIO

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.

Document with symbols included using DocIO

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.

Bullets and Numbered Lists

Styles Support

Built-in Styles can be applied on text as well as Custom Styles can be defined and applied on text.

Document with Built In Styles

Document with Custom Styles

Tables Support

There are extensive configuration options available to be applied on tables:

Cell margins and padding
Cell merging
Nested tables
Images within table cells
Ability to insert tables in document header

Formatted Tables using DocIO

Custom Cell Spacing and Nested tables

Table with images

Table of Contents

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.

Document with Table of Contents

Images Support

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.

Document with a Vector Image

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.

Text Watermark

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.

Column Breaks 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.

Section Breaks created using Essential DocIO

Printing Features

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 Header Created using DocIO

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.

Page Number Formatting in DocIO

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.

Footnotes for a Page

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.

Endnotes for a Section

Document Settings and Protection

Both the standard and custom document properties can be viewed and modified using Essential DocIO.

Document with Table of Contents

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.

Document with Table of Contents

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.

Protected Document

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.

Opening an encrypted document in Word

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.

Comments created using DocIO

Streaming Support

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.

Doc to PDF

Combine with Essential PDF to convert a Word document to PDF.

Word Document and the Converted PDF

HTML to Doc

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.

HTML converted to Document

Doc to HTML

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.

Doc content converted to HTML

Doc to EPub

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.

Doc content converted to EPub format

Doc to RTF

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.

Doc content converted to RTF

RTF to Doc

Essential DocIO allows you to do the reverse of the above as well, converting RTF documents to .doc.

RTF content converted to Doc

Doc to Text

.Doc-formatted files can also be converted to plain text format for consumption in low-end devices.