BIRT Report to Word 2002

I am trying to run a BIRT report from Rational Software Modeler 7.5.3 to .doc (requires Word2003 or greater). I am using Word 2002. Has anyone been successful with the Microsoft 'Compatibility Pack for Word 2007' to be able to view reports from Rational/BIRT using Word2002? Any help is much appreciated!

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mwilliams

Hi brice9,

Have you figured anything out on this issue? Unfortunately, I don't have an old copy of office to test out the compatiblility package. Let me know what you've done.

brice9

Hi Michael,

Thank you for any help! Here is what I have tried:

1. Created report in RSM/BIRT and ran it to .doc, saved it (because if I try to open it with Word2002, it doesn't recognize the format);
2. Opened the .doc in Word2007 (on my personal, non-work PC), saved it to .docx.
3. Copied the .docx to my work PC and opened with Word2002 (Compatibility Pack installed). It opened, edited beautifully, no problems.

The above exercise suggests to me:
1. that Compatibility Pack works as expected (except the above sequence is not a solution since we have Word2002 only);
2. that the difficulty is in the BIRT code to Word (does it specifically designate Word2003 or greater, and why doesn't Compatibility Pack work, even so?)

Thanks again for ALL ideas! We don't upgrade to 2007 for at least another year, so we will not be able to use BIRT until then, unless I can find a workaround/patch.

betsy

mwilliams

betsy, 
 
Have you tried using the Tribix emitters: 
 
<a class='bbc_url' href='http://www.birt-exchange.org/devshare/designing-birt-reports/33-tribix-extended-emitters-for-birt/#description'>Tribix - Extended Emitters for BIRT - Designs & Code - BIRT Exchange</a> 
 
They have a RTF emitter.

brice9

hi Michael,

looks like the emitters that you mention are very interesting, but work only for BIRT 2.5. Unfortunately, Rational Software Modeler 7.5.3 uses BIRT 2.3.2r232. I did try installing anyway, in hopes that at least the rtf would work without success; the additional report formats do not appear as options for report output.

Other ideas?

Thank you, again,
betsy

mwilliams

betsy,

If you go to all files, you should be able to scroll down and see that there is one for 2.3.1. That should also work for 2.3.2. At least I have used the 2.3.1 xls emitter for 2.3.2.2, so I would assume that the rtf emitter would do the same.

Let me know.

brice9

Hi Michael,

I have not been successful with the .rtf emitter. I did the following:

Downloaded rtf-emitter-src_2.3.1
Extracted the downloaded plugin file (rtf-emitter-src_2.3.1) into the eclipse plugins directory(SDPshared/plugins).

I did the above with Rational closed, then reopened it and then into report design. I selected 'Run' but don't see an additional option for 'rtf'. So, I ran as doc, then open (but the code is still recognized as 'Encoded Text').

First, I notice that there are 2 other downloadables (are these 2 also necessary?):
rtf-emitter-bin_2.3.1_for_BIRT_2.2.x.zip
rtf-emitter-bin 2.3.1.zip

or, are there additional steps that I failed to complete? or is additional software necessary?

Thank you, again,
betsy

mwilliams

betsy,

rtf-emitter-bin 2.3.1.zip is the file that has the jar file plugin in it. You should use that one, I would think. The src one is the source code download.

brice9

Hi Michael,

I was able to copy the plugin you mention and reports are testing successfully. Thank you so much! This is a huge improvement!

betsy

mwilliams

betsy,

Excellent! Glad to be of help!

brice9

Hi Michael,

This emitter is great, but is it possible to have it more Word-like by removing or not having the text boxes around text fields? Any options to have these removed or prevented either in BIRT or in WORD? Many thanks, again! betsy

mwilliams

Betsy, 
 
Most likely, what it looks like it what you're gonna get. The only option to change this would probably be to download the source for the emitter and change it, which may be fairly time consuming. 
 
You could always file a bug with the Tribix makers on the sourceforge site to see what they say. 
 
<a class='bbc_url' href='http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=166446&atid=839039'>SourceForge.net: Tribix - Extended Emitters for BIRT: Bugs</a>