Windward only supports standard text boxes.

• The border will always be a solid line if any border is set.
  • Standard dot and dash border (DOCX only)
• Background always rendered as a solid color
• Absolute positioning of tables and images is not supported. See Template Best Practices for more information.

Linked textbox support: 

• If the output is not DOCX:
  • The anchor points for the textboxes must be in the same order as the next links.
• All other settings are ignored.

Grouped textboxes (which are fundamentally grouped shapes) are not supported.

• We ignore formatting within the field results (basically we always do \* MERGEFORMAT).
• We ignore formulas.
• calcOnExit(), entryMacro(), and exitMacro() are not applicable for report generation.

For fields we pass blindly across, like DATE or NUMCHARS, any formatting should appear in the generated report.

However, for fields where we calculate the result such as PRINTDATE and PAGE, the formatting is limited as follows:

• We only handle the general formats: ALPHABETIC, alphabetic, Arabic, Roman, & roman.
• Numeric and date formats such as "00.00" and "mm-dd-yyyy" are passed to the Java classes DecimalFormat or SimpleDateFormat. These are about 98% identical, but there are some differences.

Fields written as based on the report content

We write the following fields based on the report content.

The form fields FORMCHECKBOX, FORMDROPDOWN, and FORMTEXT are written as forms to DOCX, PDF, and HTML output. For other formats they are written as text.

Fields written to DOCX reports, but not passed to other report output formats

The following fields are blindly written to DOCX reports but are not passed to any other report output formats:

Fields written to all output formats

The following fields are blindly written to all output formats. For formats other than DOCX the result text of the field is written.

* FILESIZE, NUMCHARS, and NUMWORDS should logically be the values of the generated report. However, calculating these is expensive and no one needs them so for performance reasons, these will be the values for the template, not the report.

** AUTOTEXTLIST is normally used for Windward tags. But if it does not contain a tag, then it is passed across blindly.

An embedded object in an Office document requires the program that embedded the object to be able to edit or display that object. An object can be from any program and writing a renderer for each program would be an infinite task. 

Microsoft realized that no program could write a renderer for every type of embedded object, so every embedded object contains a bitmap of the last time the object was rendered in Office. This bitmap is what is used by applications instead of the filetype of the app that created the object.

Windward does the following:

1. For DOCX -> DOCX and XLSX -> XLSX, Windward copies the object across as the object element. In the generated report it will be the same object. 
2. XLSX is only supported for Excel 2010 and later (Excel 2007 stores the metafile in a very convoluted way).
3. For all other cases it uses the embedded bitmap and displays that bitmap for the object in the output.

This generally works exactly as you want. But there are two limitations to this approach:

1. If the embedded object uses live data, it will not re-render based on the latest data when the report is generated. It will be the render from the last time Office caused the object to render.
2. When you zoom in on a report, the bitmap for the object has limited resolution and when zooming past that limit, the image will look pixelated.

Shapes as object or elements

Windward supports the output of Shapes and Smart Art when added as elements to a document. 

Version 15  

Version 15 includes limited support of MS Office's native Shapes and Smart Art. Tags can be placed inside Shapes and Smart Art and will output as follows:

• DOCX to DOCX - Fully Supported
• DOCX to PDF - Limited functionality
• DOCX - HTML - Unsupported

Version 14 and earlier

Smart Art and Shapes are not supported for use with Designer Tags.  This means that Tags cannot be placed inside Shapes or Smart Art.  

• Bi-directional (bidi) settings
• Contextual spacing (ignore spacing between paragraphs with identical properties)
• Keep paragraphs together
• Keep paragraph with next
• List and outline numbering
• Page break before paragraph
• Style (see style limits)
• Widows and orphans

• Alignment: support left, right, center, justify for all output. Other alignments supported for DOCX output only (and set to left for non DOCX).
• Background: patterns are supported for DOCX output only. All other settings supported for all output formats.
• Borders: fancy borders are DOCX output only. All other border settings supported for all output.
• Tabs: bar and decimal tabs supported for DOCX output only. All other settings supported for all output formats.

• Indents: position settings are supported for all output formats. Character indents (this are rarely used) are ignored.
• Line and paragraph spacing: settings in absolute units are supported for all output. Autospacing and settings in-line units (these are rarely used) not supported.

• Mirror indents
• Text alignment (non DOCX uses baseline alignment)
• Textbox wrapping

• Autospace
• Frames (note: Windward does support textboxes)
• Grids - adjust, align to, etc.
• Line and paragraph numbering
• Punctuation rules - top line and overflow
• Text flow direction (Windward always uses left to right (or bidi), top to bottom)
• Typography rules (this is mostly for Asian text)
• Word wrap off

• Bold
• Capital (regular and small caps)
• Color
• Fonts (DOCX defines 4 fonts for each run that are used based on the character set.)
• Font size
• Hidden text
• Highlight
• Italics
• Language setting
• Right to Left (RTL) and bi-directional (bidi) settings
• Script (ASCII, high-ANSI, complex, and east-Asia)
• Shading and highlighting (highlighting is converted to shading)
• Strikethrough (single and double)
• Style (see style limits).
• Subscript and superscript.
• Vertical position of text

Underline: for non-DOCX output Windward supports single, double, thick and words only.

• Character spacing adjustment
• Character effects: emboss, imprint, outline and shadow
• Expanded and compressed text
• Fit text to run width
• Kerning 

• Animated text effects
• East Asian typography settings
• Math (Office Open XML Math)
• Snap to grid

• Legal numbering
• Linked numbering styles
• Overriding settings
• Paragraph properties (as defined here)
• Re-start numbering
• Start numbering at
• Styles (as defined here)
• Suffix placed between bullet and start of paragraph text
• Text formats for bullet/number
• Text run properties (as defined here)

Alignment: Windward supports left, right, center, and justify for all output. Other alignments are supported for DOCX output only (and set to left for non DOCX).

Bitmap bullets

• Bi-directional setting
• Cell margins
• Conditional formatting (first/last row/column, banding, etc.)
• Cell spacing
• Floating positioning
• Indent (left margin)
• Style

• Alignment: Windward supports left, right, center, justify for all output. Other alignments supported for DOCX output only (and set to left for non DOCX).
• Background: patterns are supported for DOCX output only. All other settings supported for all output formats.
• Borders: fancy borders are supported for DOCX output only. All other border settings supported for all output.

• Table overlap is allowed. For other outputs overlap is always allowed.
• If a table is within newspaper columns, it cannot break across columns for paged (PDF, Printer, etc.) output.

• Cannot split a row across pages
• Columns before and after the row (a row does not extend across the entire table)
• Repeat row on every new page
• Table height
• Width before and after the row (a row does not extend across the entire table)

Alignment: Windward supports left, right, center, justify for all output. Other alignments supported for DOCX output only (and set to left for non DOCX).

Cell spacing  

• Cell Margins
• Cell Width
• Horizontally merged cells
• Text direction
• Vertical alignment
• Vertically merged cells
• Word wrap in cell turned on/off

• Background: patterns are supported for DOCX output only. All other settings supported for all output formats.
• Borders: fancy borders are supported for DOCX output only. All other border settings supported for all output.

Fit text within cell

• Word 2010
• Word 2013
• Word 2016
• Word 2019

This list applies to Excel and PowerPoint as well

Note:  Windward Studios stops support of an Office Version 11 years after the Office Release