New Releases, Upgrades and Fixes
Where to find information about new Aspose.Words releases?
The releases themselves are published in the Downloads section, you can subscribe to this page and also to the Aspose.Words Blog to receive notifications 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 versions from 1.0 to 4.0.
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 to build applications for .NET Framework 2.0 and higher.
What Java Versions are Supported?
Aspose.Words supports Java 1.4, 1.5 and 1.6.
What Visual Studio Versions are Supported?
You can use Aspose.Words to build applications using Visual Studio versions 2003 to 2010.
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.
- Browse through this FAQ, the Support Forum and Aspose.Words Documentation before reporting the issue.
- 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..." message?
This is an evaluation message inserted automatically when using Aspose.Words in the 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
License Aspose.Words in the documentation.
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. For more information see Feature Overview in the documentation.
Can you provide details about what features of every document format are supported by Aspose.Words?
See What Document Features are Supported in the documentation, but at the moment it does not provide details for all supported formats. We will add more information in the near future.
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 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.
When conversion to PDF in Aspose.Words for Java will be fully available?
Rendering Word documents to PDF is available in Aspose.Words for Java since version 4.0 released on 30th November 2009. We call that functionality "BETA" because of several limitations: images are only saved as JPEG to PDF, not all bitmap types are rendered correctly, image cropping is ignored, WordArt is not rendered and a few others. Conversion to PDF in Aspose.Words for Java will be fully available in few weeks.
Fields
Does Aspose.Words support field update?
Yes, Aspose.Words for .NET supports field update, including IF fields. For a detailed list of supported field types, see Field Update in the documentation.
Does Aspose.Words support Table Of Contents (TOC) fields?
Yes. Aspose.Words fully supports TOC fields. You can insert and update (completely rebuild) a TOC field in Aspose.Words and the TOC will look exactly as it was updated by Microsoft Word.
Mail Merge
Can I do a mail merge for parent-child (nested) data?
Yes. Aspose.Words for .NET supports nested mail merge regions and it allows you to generate reports from master-detail (parent-child) data with ease. If your data is inside a .NET DataSet object that has proper DataTable and DataRelationship objects set up, then all you need to do is pass a DataSet to the Aspose.Words mail merge engine. It will automatically figure out data relationships and generate a report with the required data. On the other hand, it is also easy to implement your own mail merge data source interfaces IMailMergeDataSource and IMailMergeDataSourceRoot to generate a report from any data source be it a LINQ query, XML file or a set of business objects. We will be writing more in the blog and in the documentation about this great new feature.
Printing and Viewing
Can Aspose.Words print my documents on a server?
Yes. See Rendering and Printing in the documentation. There are two ways to print: via the .NET printing infrastructure or via the XpsPrint API.
When using the .NET printing, the easiest way to print is using the Aspose.Words.Document.Print method. It is also possible to completely customize the printing process, see the Aspose.Words.Rendering.AsposeWordsPrintDocument class.
If you want to print via the XpsPrint API, you need to use Aspose.Words.Document to convert a document to XPS first and then send it to the XpsPrint API. For more info see Print a Document on a Server via the XpsPrint API.
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?
Table styles are supported internally in Aspose.Words for the WordprocessingML formats. Documents with tables formatted using table styles and conditional formatting will correctly convert to other formats and print. But table styles are not yet available in the Aspose.Words public API.
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
Does Aspose.Words preserve macros?
Yes, Aspose.Words preserves macros (VBA project) existing in a Word document without changes, but there is no way to add new or edit existing macros using Aspose.Words.
Roman Korchagin
Lead Developer,
Aspose Auckland Team
