We have created a telerik report which we export to a pdf using an asp.net page.
This works fine and the pdf is created, looks pretty good, etc.
The issue below pertains to the text in the detail section of the report.
However if you were to use the "select tool" to select the text, it would randomly highlight the fields in different sections of the report, as opposed to highlighting them top to bottom, left to right as you would expect.
I also tested using Ctrl + A to select all and then copy, then paste in a word document. The fields at the bottom are pasted first, followed by 1 field on the top left, followed by a field on the middle right, followed by some field labels on the left, then some sections in the middle, etc. The order it is pasted in word matches the order the text is highlighted when I drag my mouse cursor over the text.
Is there a way to control the order that these fields are highlighted when selected and the order they are pasted when copied from the pdf? I would have though it would copy from top to bottom, left to right pretty much every pdf I have used other than the ones created from telerik reporting.
For example, in the attached screenshot of the reports, I have labelled the fields with numbers the display the order the fields are highlighted when dragging the cursor over the text (and the order they are pasted in word if I do a "select all", copy and paste (I have hidden the field names for security reasons). I note that it is not the order that these fields (textboxes, htmltextboxes) were added to the report either.
2 Answers, 1 is accepted
Rank 1
As a follow-up on this - I ran an experiment and instead of outputting to PDF, I output it to RTF.
As per the highlighting issue above, the RTF displays the fields in a "random" ordering (i.e. the fields are showing up on the RTF as per the order I indicated on my previous attached image) which is totally different from how it looks in the report designer and the pdf.
Rank 1
Just redid a report from scratch and ran several tests.
I can confirm that the "highlighting" when selecting text depends on the order you add the fields in (contrary to my initial findings as per my previous posts). This means that if you have a report and then you have to add a field somewhere in the middle, it can screw up text highlighting for selection on the pdf output result and the only solution for the moment is to remove and re-add the fields in the order you want them (resulting in a much longer time to do the report if adding just a few fields)