Question

Is it possible to manipulating a RTF file??

Asked by: sulzener

I'm desiring to convert a PC app over to CF8.  The current application will create a nicely formatted  outlined RTF file based upon drop-down selections.  It starts with a base RTF template and then additional text is added (based on drop-downs) to build the final document.  I am wondering if it is possible to manipulate an RTF document using CF8 and maintain the formatting?  If so, can some point me in the right direction?  IF not, do you have any suggestions how to accomplish.  I'd like to save alot of work by using the existing RTF if possible.  Thanks.

This Question has been solved and asker verified All Experts Exchange premium technology solutions are available to subscription members.

Subscribe now for full access to Experts Exchange and get

Instant Access to this Solution

  • Plus...
  • 30 Day FREE access, no risk, no obligation
  • Collaborate with the world's top tech experts
  • Unlimited access to our exclusive solution database
  • Never be left without tech help again

Subscribe Now

Asked On
2009-02-26 at 13:00:00ID24181677
Tags

ColdFusion

Topic

ColdFusion Application Server

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
12

Trusted by hundreds of thousands everyday for fast, accurate and reliable tech support.

  • "The time we save is the biggest benefit of Experts Exchange to Warner Bros. What could take multiple guys 2 hours or more each to find is accessed in around 15 minutes on Experts Exchange." Mike Kapnisakis, Warner Bros.
  • "Our team likes having a resource that is more secure than just using Google and most experts using this service really know their stuff. It's nice to look here first versus using Google." Dayna Sellner, Lockheed Martin
  • "Anytime that I've been stumped with a problem, 9 out of 10 times Experts Exchange has either the accepted solution or an open discussion of the potential solution to the problem." Kenny Red, eBay Inc.

See what Experts Exchange can do for you.

Got a question?

We've got the answer.

Experts Exchange has been collecting answers to technology questions since 1996…3 million and counting! If you have a question, chances are we already have your answer.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Need individual assistance?

Our experts are ready to help.

If you can't find the exact answer you're looking for, ask our exclusive community of 50,000 experts. You’ll get a personalized answer from a trusted professional.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Want to learn from the best?

Read articles from industry experts.

Thousands of free tech tips, tricks, how-to’s and tutorials are available in our peer reviewed articles section. See for yourself how smart our experts are, no login required.

Screenshot of an Article

Working on a long term project?

Store your work and research.

Save solutions to your questions, answers you’ve discovered through searching plus helpful articles in your personal knowledgebase for easy future access.

Screenshot of Experts Exchange Knowledgebase

Access the answers to your technology questions today.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

What Makes Experts Exchange Unique?

Members of the expert community talk about why the experience at Experts Exchange is different than what you will find anywhere else.

Trusted by the world's most respected brands.

image of each brand's logo

Faithfully serving IT professionals since 1996.

Experts Exchange Logo

Try it out and discover for yourself.

Subscribe Now

30-day free trial. Register in 60 seconds.

Related Solutions

  1. Manipulating an RTF control
    Through code I want to add lines of text and some graphics objects to an RTF control. One of those obects will be an OLE object from Word. Here is the scenario. I have some info I pulled from a database in memory. I want to take that info and place it into the RTF control. I...
  2. RTF TO RTF
    hi, i have a big rtf file (5Mb) which contains information for several warehouses. I want to sort out the warehouses i don't need. eg 20/03/01 WAREHOUSE : 1 body 20/03/01 WAREHOUSE : 2 Is it necessary to load the rtf file to a RichTextbox control ? If i try the comman...
  3. RichTextBox:  Manipulating RTF codes
    I am using the RichTextBox control to generate reports. For longer reports, with embedded images, the file can become quite large. The VB RichTextBox does not provide support for certain RTF codes, such as "\page" to indicate a new page. I need to be able to gene...
  4. RTF
    experts, Is there any posible way to count the number of lines on RTF? and if the number of lines achive the defined maximum number of lines it will authomaticaly go to the next page but the same form template. I need this on my ISO documentation.. thanks..

Free Tech Articles

  1. WARNING: 5 Reasons why you should NEVER fix a computer for free.
    It is in our nature to love the puzzle. We are obsessed. The lot of us. We love puzzles. We love the challenge. We thrive on finding the answer. We hate disarray. It bothers us deep in our soul. W...
  2. SCCM OSD Basic troubleshooting
    SCCM 2007 OSD is a fantastic way to deploy operating systems, however, like most things SCCM issues can sometimes be difficult to resolve due to the sheer volume of logs to sift through and the dispe...
  3. Migrate Small Business Server 2003 to Exchange 2010 and Windows 2008 R2
    This guide is intended to provide step by step instructions on how to migrate from Small Business Server 2003 to Windows 2008 R2 with Exchange 2010. For this migration to work you will need the fo...
  4. Create a Win7 Gadget
    This article shows you how to create a simple "Gadget" -- a sort of mini-application supported by Windows 7 and Vista. Gadgets can be dropped anywhere on the desktop to provide instant information, ...
  5. Outlook continually prompting for username and password
    There have been a lot of questions recently regarding Outlook prompting for a username and password whilst using Exchange 2007. There are a few reasons why this would happen and I will try to cover t...
  6. Backup Exchange 2010 Information Store using Windows Backup
    There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around the ability to backup Exchange 2010 using the built in Windows Backup feature. This stems from the omission of this feature prior to Exchange 2007 s...

Cloud Class Webinars

  1. Avoiding Bugs in Microsoft Access
    Alison Balter takes and in-depth look at avoiding bugs in Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the immediate window to debug your applications, invoking the debugger, using breakpoints to troubleshoot, stepping through code, setting the next statement to execute, ...
  2. Top 10 Best New Features in Visio 2010
    Scott Helmers gives live demonstrations of the top 10 new features in Visio 2010. This webinar will teach you how to create compelling diagrams by adding shapes to the page with a single click, linking the shapes in a diagram to data in Excel (or SQL Server, or SharePoint), ...
  3. IT Consultant Business Secrets Revealed
    Michael Munger, Experts Exchange tech pro and IT consultant, pulls back the curtain on his very successful businesses and answers question on every IT consultant and business owner should know about. He shares secrets on what he did to solve the 5 most common problems in IT, ...
  4. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
    Quest CTO, Mike Billon, gives an overview of the steps involved in building a dunamic disaster recovery plan. Through case studies and an examination of software/hardware tooles for monitoring and testing, you'll gain a better understandin of where you are, where you want ...
  5. Organize Your Visio Diagrams with Containers and Lists
    Scott Helmers uses cross functional flowcharts, wireframe diagrams, data graphic legends and seating charts to teach you: how to ustilize all three new structured diagram components in Visio 2010, the best practices for organizeing shapes in previous version of Visio, how to organize ...
  6. How to Us Objects, Properties, Events and Methods in Microsoft Access
    Alison Dalter gives an in-depbth look at objects, properties, events and methods in Microsoft Access. In this webinar you will learn about using the object browser, referring to objects, working with properties and methods, working with object variables, understanding the ...

Join the Community

Give a Little. Get a Lot.

Join the community of experts here and help other tech pros by answering question in your area of expertise. You can earn FREE access to all Experts Exchange's premium features and resources.

Join the Community

Answers

 

by: duncancummingPosted on 2009-02-26 at 13:40:18ID: 23750180

you may want to look at the Apache POI project
http://poi.apache.org/

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-26 at 15:57:46ID: 23751428

Thanks.  Seems pretty complicated to me.  Hopefully someone will have an easier suggestions.  I would probably have to pay someone to help me do this.  I am not sure if this is appropriate or not.  But if this is my only option, do you know of anyone who I could pay to help me implement this using CF?

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-02-26 at 16:01:07ID: 23751449

When you say "PC app", what exactly is used for the current process?

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-26 at 18:07:01ID: 23752073

I'm guessing the executable is in VB6.  I have access to the tables and RTF templates because they are in an MS access (MDB) which I have access to.  The program was written before my time and it's now desired to have system done in CF.  It seems pretty basic because I can follow the logic by running the app and looking at the tables.  Hope this makes sense.  I've never really manipulated RTFs before.  I can tell PC app is passing/replacing data in the RTF based on selections.

 

by: duncancummingPosted on 2009-02-26 at 23:30:59ID: 23753433

I'm not familiar with the format for RTF documents.  Can you show us some of the VB code that manipulates the RTF?

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-27 at 06:26:17ID: 23755860

I'm trying to figure out what the former programmer did and then basically duplicate in ColdFusion.  He and the source are no longer available.  Here is a simple example of what the system does.  Maybe this will help someone point me towards the best approach.  The ultimate goal is to build a document that can be emailed based upon selected criteria.  This document needs to be editable.  Cannot be a PDF.  

<!--- MainSample.RTF --->
@@TITLEPAGE@@
SECTION I
 
1.01	DESCRIPTION
Prepared for on @APPNAME@, located at @APPADDRESS@, in @APPCITY@, @APPSTATE@.
 
<!--- TitlePage.TXT --->
\pard\plain \qc \li0\ri0\widctlpar\aspalpha\aspnum\faauto\adjustright\rin0\lin0\itap0 \f27\fs28\lang1033\langfe1033\cgrid\langnp1033\langfenp1033 {\f0\fs28 Created for: \par }{\b\f0\fs28 @APPNAME@ \par }{\f0\fs28 @APPADDRESS@ \par @APPCITY@, @APPSTATE@ @APPZIPCODE@ \par }

                                              
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:

Select allOpen in new window

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-27 at 06:47:48ID: 23756074

After rethinking what I just wrote:  It might be better to store the RTF and TEXT data in tables.  Then create the document via HTML.  The only thing left to do is to be able to email the application and have it editable.  Preferably in a DOC or RTF format.  This is where I am totally stumped.  Any ideas?

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-02-27 at 07:11:18ID: 23756277

I haven't done much work with RTF's.  But as I understand it RTF files are basically text.  So _theoretically_ you should be able to manipulate the templates as you would text files.

1. Just read in the "text" from the rtf template (Use cffile action=read the content into a variable)
2. Do a replace() on the variable (ie to substitute the template variables with the final values)
3. Finally save the variable content to disk as an "rtf" file (ie cffile action="write" )

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-27 at 07:40:40ID: 23756550

That sounds like a great plan.  I will try a sample and see if it works.  I'll let you know.  Thanks.

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-27 at 08:20:16ID: 23757027

agx, Many, many thanks.  That worked perfectly.  I cant believe how easy that was.  You have absolutely no idea how happy I am.  Thanks a million.

 

by: sulzenerPosted on 2009-02-27 at 08:20:54ID: 31551866

I am so appreciative of your help.  Thanks again.

 

by: _agx_Posted on 2009-02-27 at 09:11:02ID: 23757551

I am glad it worked out.  It is always, nice when a task turns out to be far simpler than you think ;-)

20120131-EE-VQP-002

3 Ways to Join

30-Day Free Trial

The Experts

98% positive feedback on 31,087 answers since March 2000. angeliii is a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for his work with MS SQL Server & Develoment.

He has also proven his knowledge of Visual Basic Programming, PHP Scripting and Oracle Databases.

The Experts

97% positive feedback on 10,752 answers since July 2000. lrmoore has more than 18 years experience in the networking industry.

The six-time Mircosoft MVPs specialties include firewalls, virtual private networking, and network management.

Testimonials

"...and excellent source for support... Kind of like having your very own IT dept." Electriciansnet

Testimonials

"I was apprehensive at signing up at first. However... it has already made my life as an IT administrator much easier." JaCrews

Testimonials

"WOW! You guys have great, active, and knowledgeable people on here." moore50

Business Clients

Business Clients

In the Press

"If you’ve got a question... Experts Exchange can supply an answer.”

In the Press

"...an invaluable aid for both IT professionals and those who require tech support."

In the Press

"where IT professionals provide quick answers on just about any topic"

Business Account Plans

Loading Advertisement...