Creating Colored Squares in RadFlowDocument

Updated on Jun 5, 2026

Environment

Version	Product	Author
2024.1.124	RadWordsProcessing	Desislava Yordanova

Description

A common requirement is to insert shapes in a RadFlowDocument (or a DOCX file). RadWordsProcessing does not support this feature natively.

This article shows how to create a RadFlowDocument with colored squares with borders using the library.

A similar approach works for other shapes such as circles, triangles, and rectangles.

Solution

The recommended approach to achieve the colored square is to generate an image with the desired size and insert it in the RadFlowDocument. Export the document to DOCX or any supported format to produce the following result:

The following code snippet shows the process:

csharp

using System.IO; 
using Telerik.Windows.Documents.Flow.Model.Editing;
using Telerik.Windows.Documents.Flow.Model;
using System.Drawing;
using Telerik.Windows.Documents.Flow.FormatProviders.Docx;
using System.Diagnostics;

namespace DrawSquareShapesInFlowDocument
{
    internal class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
            RadFlowDocument flowDocument = new RadFlowDocument();
            RadFlowDocumentEditor editor = new RadFlowDocumentEditor(flowDocument);
            InsertImage(editor, Color.Aqua, Color.Blue, new Size(40, 20));
            InsertImage(editor, Color.Yellow, Color.Red, new Size(100, 50));

            DocxFormatProvider provider = new DocxFormatProvider();
            string filePath = @"..\..\output.docx";
            File.Delete(filePath);
            using (Stream output = File.OpenWrite(filePath))
            {
                provider.Export(flowDocument, output);
            }
            Process.Start(filePath);
        }

        private static void InsertImage(RadFlowDocumentEditor editor, Color fillColor, Color borderColor, Size size)
        {
            Image img = CreateBitmapFromColors(fillColor, borderColor, size);

            string imagePath = @"..\..\test.png";
            img.Save(imagePath);
            using (Stream stream = File.OpenRead(imagePath))
            {
                editor.InsertImageInline(stream, "png");
            }
            File.Delete(imagePath);
        }

        private static Image CreateBitmapFromColors(Color fillColor, Color borderColor, Size s)
        {
            Bitmap bitmap = new Bitmap(s.Width, s.Height);
            using (Graphics g = Graphics.FromImage(bitmap))
            {
                Rectangle colorRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, s.Width, s.Height);
                using (SolidBrush brush = new SolidBrush(fillColor))
                {
                    g.FillRectangle(brush, colorRect);
                }
                colorRect.X += s.Width;
                Rectangle fullRect = new Rectangle(0, 0, bitmap.Width, bitmap.Height);
                fullRect.Width -= 1;
                fullRect.Height -= 1;
                g.DrawRectangle(new System.Drawing.Pen(borderColor), fullRect);
            }

            return bitmap;
        }
    }
}

See Also

• Shapes