Office (Edit Rich Text & Spreadsheets)

• Aug 11, 2023
• 4 minutes to read

The Office Module integrates the following DevExpress controls into an XAF application:

• ASP.NET Core Blazor Rich Text Editor with Mail Merge support
• WinForms Rich Text Editor with Mail Merge support
• ASP.NET Web Forms Rich Text Editor with Mail Merge support
• WinForms Spreadsheet
• ASP.NET Web Forms Spreadsheet

You can try out the Office Module in the Property Editors and Reports sections of the Feature Center demo installed to the following folder: %PUBLIC%\Documents\DevExpress Demos 23.2\Components\XAF\FeatureCenter.NETFramework.XPO.

Office Module Capabilities

Rich Text Editor

The Office Module provides three platform-specific Property Editors:

ASP.NET Core Blazor

DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Blazor.Editors.RichTextPropertyEditor that uses the DxRichEdit component.

Windows Forms

DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Win.RichTextPropertyEditor that uses RichEditControl.

ASP.NET Web Forms

DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Web.ASPxRichTextPropertyEditor that uses the ASPxRichEdit control.

These editors allow end-users to edit rich text documents stored in different formats.

ASP.NET Core Blazor

Windows Forms

ASP.NET Web Forms

For information on how to access Rich Text Editor controls, refer to the following topic: How to: Access the Rich Text Editor Controls.

On Linux, the Office Module for Blazor may require additional libraries to be installed. For more information, refer to the following topic: Use Office File API on Linux - Prerequisites.

You can also create Mail Merge templates to generate documents based on data from your application database.

Spreadsheet Editor

The Office Module provides two platform-specific Property Editors:

Windows Forms

DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Win.SpreadsheetPropertyEditor that uses SpreadsheetControl.

ASP.NET Web Forms

DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Web.ASPxSpreadsheetPropertyEditor that uses the ASPxSpreadsheet control.

These editors allow end-users to edit spreadsheet documents.

For information on how to access Spreadsheet controls, refer to the following topic: How to: Access the Spreadsheet Editor Controls.

Windows Forms

ASP.NET Web Forms

Office Module Components

Modules

Application Model Extensions

The Office Module extends the Application Model with the following properties:

Add the Office Module to Your Application

Install the appropriate platform-specific NuGet package and use one of the following techniques to add the Office Module:

• You can add modules to your application when you use the Solution Wizard to create a new XAF solution. Select modules in the Choose Additional Modules step.

• In .NET 6+ applications, you can call the AddOffice(IModuleBuilder<IBlazorApplicationBuilder>, Action<OfficeOptions>) / AddOffice(IModuleBuilder<IWinApplicationBuilder>, Action<OfficeOptions>) method in your ASP.NET Core Blazor / WinForms application builder.

• If you do not use an application builder, you can add these Modules to the ModuleBase.RequiredModuleTypes collection of the platform-specific Module.
• In .NET Framework applications, you can also use the Module Designer and Application Designer to add a module to your project.

The following additional steps may be required:

ASP.NET Core Blazor Application Without Application Builder

Navigate to the MySolution.Blazor.Server\Startup.cs file and call the AddOffice method in the Startup.ConfigureServices method to register the Office Module services in IServiceCollection:

using DevExpress.ExpressApp.Office.Blazor;
// ...
public class Startup {
    // ...
    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services){
        //...
        services.AddOffice();
    }
    // ...
}