Export to Excel, Word and XHTML from the Preview Window

This has been a customer request that kept coming back over and over again – “please add the possibility to export to more formats from the preview window”. The typical workflow obviously is to check the result in the preview first. If all is well then an export to the final format is triggered. In List & Label 20 we now have added the possibility to export to the formats that were requested most – Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word and XHTML. These formats were added to the already existing PDF, Text and Image formats.

This feature is available if the application uses the Ribbon UI and supports the drilldown callback. As a rule of thumb – if you’re using one of our components (.NET, VCL) you’re fine, otherwise you’ll have to do some work. However, it might well be worth the effort anyway, as supporting the drilldown callback is the foundation for a number of features introduced in version 19 already.  The interactive report parameter printing which has just become even more interesting, interactive sortings and collapsible areas all rely on this support.

Once the prerequisites are met, you’ll find a new button in the preview ribbon that gives access to the new feature:

This starts an export to the selected format. In the following file selection dialog you can easily customize all export options as required – it’s exactly the same dialog that’s available for a “normal” export. You can even automatically email the export result via MAPI, XMAPI or SMTP. Talking about SMTP, have you noticed we recently added thorough TLS support to version 19 enabling you to send “secure” mails? But well, that’s a different story…

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