Aspose.Words for JasperReports FAQ

This FAQ contains technical questions related to Aspose.Words for JasperReports frequently asked by our customers and those who evaluate the product. Please read before posting your question in the support forum, maybe your question is already answered here.

Technical Support

Is Aspose technical support free?

Yes, we provide unlimited free technical support for all users of our products including customers and evaluation.

The main avenue for technical support is the Support Forums. Post your questions and they will be answered quickly, but take time zones into consideration when expecting an answer.

I have a problem with Aspose.Words for JasperReports, what should I do?

If you have a problem, we usually need to reproduce it in our tests. To speed this process up:

  1. Attach the print(s) of your report(s) (.jrprint) that cause the issue(s) to your post.
  2. Attach the resulting Microsoft Word documents produced by the exporter.
  3. Describe the problem; specify what error you get, what document formatting is incorrect etc.

Is it safe to attach my documents in the Support Forums?

Yes, it is safe. Your attachments can be downloaded only by you and Aspose staff.

Export

I can't see lines and rectangles in the exported document. Why?

By default, exporting of lines and rectangles from JasperReports is disabled. That is done because lines and rectangles are often used in JasperReports as borders and other decorative elements surrounding or overlapping text. Exporting them to a flow layout document would be an extremely difficult task, and often such documents would have a totally corrupted layout.

However, if your reports use lines and rectangles as stand-alone items, you can try to enable the export. Just set the ExportLines and ExportRectangles parameters to true:

http://www.aspose.com/docs/display/wordsjasperreports/lines+and+rectangles

We recommend enabling the export of lines first, and if you are satisifed with the result, enable the export of rectangles.

There are empty or excessive pages in the exported document. How to avoid that?

The cause is exactly similar to that described in the Aspose.Words for Reporting Services FAQ. Briefly, by default Aspose.Words for JasperReports exports reports to flow layout documents, which means they consist of "normal" paragraphs and tables, instead of positioned textboxes. The tradeoff is that sometimes we cannot precisely control the overall height of report items comprising the page, and that results in page contents expanding off the page. Since there is a page break at the end of a page, it gets pushed to the next page, causing a new page (partially blank) to appear.

How to struggle? Try using the SpacingFactor parameter. By default, the value of this parameter is 1.0 which means that the spacing between report items is the same as in the report design. You can try reducing the value (up to 0.0), thus shrinking the spacing and making page contents more compact. Keep reducing the value until you notice all page contents fit on the corresponding pages.

The exported document looks messed up. What's the cause?

Avoid overlapping items in your report design. Overlapping items cannot be represented in a flow layout document preserving their original position or size because flow layout does not support Z-order by design. However, Aspose.Words for JasperReports attempts to export overlapping items as close to original design as possible. It uses a couple of approaches to resolve this problem. By default, it uses the "truncate" method. You can try another method called "push" to figure out if the exported document looks better. To know more about overlap resolution methods and how to enable the "push" method, please refer to the following documentation topic:

http://www.aspose.com/docs/display/wordsjasperreports/overlapping+items

However, we recommend to avoid overlapping items in your reports to convert them to Word document with the best quality possible.

Why all page margins are 0?

Because there's no way to detect them in the JasperReports print model used by the exporters. Expect a workaround shortly.

Are rounded rectangles and ellipses supported?

No at the moment. Maybe we will be exporting them as inline shapes in the future. And they will surely be supported once we introduce the positioned layout mode (similar to that provided by the standard RTF exporter).