The Rich Text Edit control is a powerful word-processing tool that allows you to create, load, modify, print, save and convert rich text documents in different formats. The RichEditControl processes text with any text direction. The DXRichEdit provides numerous features, such as importing and exporting options, conversion between different measurement units, field support, etc.
Follow the Getting Started tutorial to create simple word processing applications in MS Visual Studio. Look through the Examples section to learn how to accomplish different tasks. Check the Product Class Structure topic to access reference information on major Rich Editor classes. The Redistribution and Deployment topic provides a full list of required assembly references.
Document Elements
A document created by the Rich Text Editor consists of elements visible to end users. They vary from the simplest objects forming the text, to more complex ones that can contain other elements. These are:
A paragraph formatted in aligned rows and columns. The RichEdit control supports complex tables. Tables can be added, deleted and modified in code or in the UI.
The RichEditControl supports all shape types: from simple lines and rectangles, to shapes with advanced effects. All drawing objects can be moved, resized and rotated.
Interactive form fields which allow you to create fillable forms.
Views
The Rich Text Editor is able to display documents in three different ways depending on the document View:
Similar to the ‘Web Layout’ view in Microsoft Word, the Simple View does not split the document into pages, so the document has no page width or height, margins, headers or footers. This View is most appropriate for editing simple texts.
Same as the Microsoft Word’s ‘Draft View’, the Rich Text Editor Draft View displays documents as a single page without headers or footers, but applies the page width. This View can be used for text formatting.
The Print Layout View displays your documents in the same way they will appear on the printed page, with all their headers, footers, margins and columns. Use this View when you need to polish your document and prepare it for printing.
Simple View
Draft View
Print Layout View
Developer Guidelines
The DXRichEdit carries out various features that allow you to create a powerful and fully customizable text editing application, such as:
A variety of events, which allow you to track end-user actions to perform necessary operations.
A comprehensive set of services exposed by the Rich Edit Control, that enable you to build feature-rich applications.
Three types of protection that can be used to restrict an end-user’s ability to modify the document, like character or paragraph formatting, clipboard operations or printing.
The embedded autocorrect service that analyzes the entered text and automatically fixes errors based on specific rules and permissions.
The spell checking feature that allows the Rich Text Editor to highlight words with possible errors that were not fixed by auto correction.
Formatting Documents
The Rich Text Editor allows you to format document text directly (i.e., change individual formatting attributes) or use paragraph and character style.
Change layout of the document pages: add headers and footers or use settings like page orientation, paper kind or margins. You can design the first page of your document by applying its own layout settings and hiding its header and footer to start numbering from the second page.
You can build a table of contents to provide a document with quick navigation to each part of the document. It can be organized from the entire document or from any part of a text marked with a bookmark.
