New Releases, Upgrades and Fixes

Where to find information about new Aspose.Words releases?

Subscribe to the Aspose.Words Blog to receive news about latest releases, hints and tips and other useful posts from the developers of Aspose.Words.

Can I upgrade for free?

If you purchased a license for Aspose.Words, it means you have a 1-year subscription for free upgrades to any new Aspose.Words version that comes out. Any Aspose.Words version released before the subscription expiry date - you can just download and use it.

If you want to check when your subscription expires, open the license file in Notepad (but take care not to modify and save the license file or it will no longer work) and see the SubscriptionExpiry field.

Supported Environments

What .NET Framework Versions are Supported?

Aspose.Words supports .NET Framework 1.0, 1.1, 2.0, 3.0 and 3.5.

What Java Versions are Supported?

Aspose.Words supports Java 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6.

Can I use Aspose.Words in Visual Studio 2008?

Yes. Aspose.Words is provided as two assemblies bin\net1.1\Aspose.Words.dll and bin\net2.0\Aspose.Words.dll. You should use bin\net2.0\Aspose.Words.dll in Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 to build applications for .NET Framework 2.0, 3.0 or 3.5.

Technical Support

Is Aspose.Words 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 .NET or Aspose.Words for Java, what should I do?

In order to help us solve your issues quicker, please follow these simple rules:

1. Make sure you use the latest Aspose.Words before reporting the issue, see Aspose.Words  Blog to find out about latest version.
2. Browse through this FAQ, the Support Forum and the Aspose.Words Documentation before reporting the issue. Maybe your question was already answered.
3. If it still does not help, attach the original document (before processed by Aspose.Words) and  a fragment of your code that causes the problem. If you need to attach multiple files, zip them.
4. Report one issue per thread. If you have another issue, report it in a separate thread.

I have a problem with Aspose.Words for Reporting Services, 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 .rdl report(s) that cause the issue(s) to your post.
2. Attach the resulting Microsoft Word documents produced by the rendering extension.
3. Describe the problem; specify what error you get, what document formatting is incorrect etc.
4. Attach your data source if possible. A neat way of extracting a database to send is backing it up to a single disk file.

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.

Licensing

How to remove the "Evaluation Only. Created with Aspose.Words. Copyright 2003-2007 Aspose Pty Ltd." message?

This is an evaluation message inserted automatically when using Aspose.Words in evaluation mode (e.g. without a license). To remove the message, you need to buy a license and apply it programmatically before instantiating the Document object. You can also request a free 30-days temporary license to evaluate Aspose.Words without the message.

How to apply a license?

1. Copy the license file into the folder that contains assemblies of your project or include the license file as an embedded resource into your project.

2. Create an object of the Aspose.Words.License class and call the SetLicense method passing only the file name of the license file without path:

[C#]

 

Aspose.Words.License license = new Aspose.Words.License();

license.SetLicense("Aspose.Words.lic");

For more information about licensing see Aspose.Words Documentation, Getting Started, License Aspose.Words section.

I apply a license like shown above, but the evaluation message is still there.

• Make sure your call to SetLicense gets executed. Step through in the debugger.
• Make sure your code does not catch and silence an exception thrown by Aspose.Words licensing code. For example, Aspose.Words will throw if it cannot find the license.
• Make sure the input documents do not already have the evaluation message. Aspose.Words does not delete existing evaluation messages.
• Make sure SetLicense is executed before you instantiate any Document object.

File Formats and Conversions

Can Aspose.Words open, convert and save Office Open XML (DOCX) files?

• Aspose.Words for .NET 5.0.0 can load and save documents in the OOXML format.
• Aspose.Words for Java 2.4.0 can save documents in the OOXML format.
• Aspose.Words for Java will support loading OOXML files in the first half of 2008.

You can open a file in any load format supported by Aspose.Words and save in any save format supported by Aspose.Words. Therefore, with Aspose.Words for .NET you can convert DOC, RTF, WordML 2003 and HTML/XHTML documents to DOC, DOCX, RTF, WordML2003, HTML/XHTML and PDF.

Can you provide details about what features of every document format are supported by Aspose.Words?

As part of our effort to make import and export of different file formats using Aspose.Words as best as possible, we maintain a spreadsheet that documents details of various conversions capabilities. The spreadsheet can be found at http://www.aspose.com/Community/Files/51/aspose.words/category1242.aspx.

What are the limitations of HTML import and export in Aspose.Words?

Aspose.Words object model was designed to support Microsoft Word document features and formatting. For example, if you load a Microsoft Word document with multiple sections that use different page setup, have headers and footers, fields, multiple columns, tabs and so on and save the document into HTML - a lot of this information cannot be preserved in standard HTML.

While we constantly work to improve fidelity of all conversions, there is a limit to what we can do. If you have a question about Aspose.Words not importing or exporting the way you'd like to, make sure you read the Import/Export Information document that details the current state of the converters.

Why Aspose.Words does not understand all CSS during HTML import?

CSS provides a very flexible model for specifying formatting for a document. One can set font color red on the <body> element and get the whole document text colored in red (unless it is overridden in child elements). However, this model for specifying formatting is not directly compatible with Microsoft Word documents. Technically speaking, there is no way to specify font color on a document or section in a Microsoft Word document that will be inherited by all text. We plan to support CSS as best as we can, but obviously it will not be 100% possible.

Fields

Does Aspose.Words support IF fields?

At the moment Aspose.Words does not evaluate IF fields. That is when a field is present inside a loaded document, the field will remain in its original state in the saved document. Aspose.Words will not calculate the field result.

How to do a mail merge for a document with IF fields?

Basically, in the current version Aspose.Words and IF fields during mail merge do not mix well. Most likely, you need to remove the IF fields logic out of the document before you can use Aspose.Words successfully.

There is a number of ways to "move" the IF fields logic out of the document. You can move some expressions into your data source (SQL queries) or into mail merge event handlers in Aspose.Words.

Does Aspose.Words support Table Of Contents (TOC) fields?

There are several aspects of TOC fields. Aspose.Words support some, but not others.

• Aspose.Words does not calculate TOC fields. That means if you have a TOC field in a document and use Aspose.Words to add or remove content, then quite possibly, the TOC field will no longer be up to date (incorrect page numbers) when you save the document. To see the correct TOC, the user will need to update fields in Microsoft Word when he opens the document (Select All, press F9).
• Aspose.Words preserves existing TOC fields in documents.
• Aspose.Words can insert a TOC field, but it will be an "empty" TOC that can be "populated" by Microsoft Word only.

When Aspose.Words will support field evaluation/calculation?

Calculation of all fields (including TOC and IF) - current estimate is sometime in 2008. But note, the estimate was pushed several times due to other important features we had to work on.

At the moment Aspose.Words can calculate some fields, but not all. See Range.UpdateFields for the list of fields that are calculated.

Mail Merge

Can I do a mail merge for parent-child (nested) data?

In the current version there is no "one step" way to populate a document with data that has parent-child relationships. For example Order/OrderItem or ProductCategory/Product. Mail merge regions can only process one data table at a time.

It is possible, however, to generate the above reports by performing mail merge several times and building up a resulting document from several documents or fragments. The Product Catalog and Sales Invoice samples in the demo project supplied with Aspose.Words demonstrate the suggested techniques.

Printing and Viewing

Can Aspose.Words print my documents on a server?

Yes, this feature is called Aspose.Words.Viewer.

But note, printing in Aspose.Words is Beta and under heavy development and we provide limited technical support for it (this applies only to the printing feature).

If you decide to use Aspose.Words.Viewer Beta, then use it AS IS. Please be aware there will be no fix if you discover it prints some of your documents not the way you want them. In this case you need to wait for the production release of Aspose.Words.Viewer.

When a production release of Aspose.Words.Viewer will be available?

Current estimate is mid 2008, but it is not very reliable. The estimate was pushed several times due to the complexity and other important features we had to work on.

Where to get code example how to print documents using Aspose.Words?

For code examples how to print documents using Aspose.Words, see demo projects included with the Aspose.Words installer and the API reference for classes in the Aspose.Words.Viewer namespace.

Is it possible to know the number of pages the document has?

Not in the current version.  Microsoft Word documents store content linearly without any information about where each particular page starts or ends. To find page boundaries, one must layout the content of the document into pages and detect when the pages are filled up - this process is called pagination. Aspose.Words does not have a page layout engine and cannot do pagination, therefore no tasks related to pagination are supported. In the future, when Aspose.Words will provide printing and viewing features, there will be a page layout engine, these tasks will become possible.

Will be available sometime in the future, possibly in 2008.

Can Aspose.Words be used to extract specific pages from the document?

Not in the current version. See above.

Can I determine amount of space available on a page?

Not in the current version. See above.

Styles

Can I use table styles in Aspose.Words?

No, table styles are not supported in Aspose.Words. This feature will be implemented in one of the future releases.

Textboxes

Why text from several linked textboxes moves to the first textbox?

If you have linked textboxes in a document, Aspose.Words will unlink them and place all text of the linked textboxes into the first textbox. Linked textboxes will be fully supported in the future.

Macros

Why Document_Open macro no longer fires?

Aspose.Words preserves macros (VBA project) existing in a Word document without changes, but when the document is opened and saved in Aspose.Words, the Document_Open macro no longer runs when the document is opened in Microsoft Word 2000 and 2002. In Word 2003 and Word 2007 macros are run correctly when document is opened. This is a known issue.

 

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Roman Korchagin
Lead Developer, Aspose Auckland Team