Design Considerations for the PowerPoint Rendering
The PowerPoint rendering extension produces Presentation document without relying on Microsoft Office being installed. The content type of files generated by this renderer is: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.presentationml.presentation. The rendering extension requires Third-Party Dependencies. The file name extension of generated files is .PPTX and it can be viewed with MS Office PowerPoint 2007 SP3 or later.
Note that MS Office PowerPoint Viewer 2007 doesn't support all the OpenXML features and in some cases fails to open the exported .pptx files.
The PowerPoint rendering extension is based on the Image rendering extension, with some differences. For information common to both formats, see Image Rendering Design Considerations. This topic describes features that are specific to the PowerPoint rendering extension.
Report items
The following rules apply to rendered report items:
- All report items (except the Table) are exported as PowerPoint shape. If Border is set, the report item is exported as PowerPoint table.
- The exported items' minimum height depends on their Font.Size property, i.e. when exporting a textbox with no text content, whose height is less than its font line height, the exported textbox height will be increased.
- Table/Crosstab/List report item is exported as PowerPoint table. If the table table cell content is a container (Panel, Table) its children are exported separately on top of the table cell.
- The PictureBox report item's Sizing property should be set to AutoSize for best image quality or the PictureBox.Size should match the actual image size. In case you get a blurred image at run-time, change the Sizing mode or resize the PictureBox item to match the size of the produced image.
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In TextBox item with rotated text, each text line is exported as a separate rotated shape.
When the text in the TextBox item is rotated consider testing the result with different Font properties (Size and FontFamily).
Styling
- Color property is applied as color of the PowerPoint shape/table cell.
- The BackgroundImage is applied as image in the PowerPoint shape/table cell.
- When both Color and BackgroundImage are set – the Color is exported as separate PowerPoint shape. The BackgroundImage is applied as picture on top of the Color shape.
- A PictureBox report item with Color and BackgoundImage applied, will be exported as a separate PowerPoint shape for the Color, a separate PowerPoint shape for the BackgroundImage on top of the Color shape and picture for the actual image, which would be on top of both.
- If a TextBox item with justified text is rendered on two or more pages, the last line of each page (except the last page) will be left-aligned due to the natural justification algorithm used in PowerPoint.
- PowerPoint doesn't support Groove, Ridge, Inset and Outset border styles. If those styles are used the PowerPoint rendering fallbacks to Solid border style.
Page Header and Footer
Page header and Footer are rendered as PowerPoint shape/table cell as all report sections.
Interactivity
- URL actions on report items are rendered as hyperlinks in the Presentation. Hyperlinks are rendered as clickable links and when you click the hyperlink, the default Web browser opens and navigates to the specified URL. They should be applied to the top most element. URL actions on report sections are not supported.
- Table of contents interactivity (navigational links to report items) is not supported.
Limitations
- All slides in a single Presentation document have the same size. In case of ReportBook, the largest width and height from all reports is determined and applied to the Presentation document.
- (HtmlTextBox only) Paragraph margins, subscript and superscript tags are not supported.