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.
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.
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. Use bin\net2.0\Aspose.Words.dll when building an application in Visual Studio 2008.
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:
- Make sure you use the latest Aspose.Words before reporting the issue, see Aspose.Words Blog to find out about latest version.
- Browse through this FAQ, the Support Forum and the Aspose.Words Documentation before reporting the issue. Maybe your question was already answered.
- 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.
- 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:
- Attach the .rdl report(s) that cause the issue(s) to your post.
- Attach the resulting Microsoft Word documents produced by the rendering extension.
- Describe the problem; specify what error you get, what document formatting is incorrect etc.
- 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-day 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.
How to license several products?
If you purchased Aspose.Total or several products in one order, you might have just a single license file suppied to you. If you use several products in your project, you need to apply the license to each product separately. Each product has a corresponding Aspose.<Product>.License class that you need instantiate.
The following example shows how to license two products Aspose.Words and Aspose.Pdf:
[C#]
Aspose.Words.License awLic = new Aspose.Words.License();
awLic.SetLicense("Aspose.Custom.lic");
Aspose.Pdf.License apLic = new Aspose.Pdf.License();
apLic.SetLicense("Aspose.Custom.lic");
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?
Yes.
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.
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 2009. 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. See the Print methods of the Aspose.Words.Document class.
It is also possible to completely customize the printing process, see the Aspose.Words.Rendering.AsposeWordsPrintDocument class.
Is it possible to know the number of pages the document has?
Yes. See the PageCount property of the Aspose.Words.Document class.
Microsoft Word documents store content linearly without any information about where each particular page starts or ends. To find page boundaries, Aspose.Words lays the content of the document into pages and detect when the pages are filled up - this process is called pagination.
Can Aspose.Words be used to extract specific pages from the document?
It is possible to save specific pages from the document to PDF or to image files (TIFF, PNG, JPEG, EMF). It is also possible to print specific pages to a printer. See the SaveToPdf and SaveToImage methods of the Aspose.Words.Document object.
Can I determine the amount of space available on a page?
No, but this feature is planned.
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.
Roman Korchagin
Lead Developer,
Aspose Auckland Team
