* RTF formatting

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TMG_refugee
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RTF formatting

Post by TMG_refugee »

I was trying to format a narrative report and place the pictures correctly. I found that the entire report is formatted using tables. The images cannot be placed like a normal word document but must be manually altered creating new cells etc, and still not able to format like a normal word document.

I am using word 2010 but had someone else check with Office 365. A picture within a cell cannot be formatted using the right click and selecting format picture.

I checked the FH individual summary and the RTF is the same however the record detail report uses a combination where the images are still in a table but the text is outside of any table.

The use of tables like this is not very user friendly. Is there something I am doing wrong?

I saw this question discussed in 2016 but hope there has been some progress.
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victor
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by victor »

I save my narrative reports in RTF format then save it again in Word doc which I use to arrange the images and place them where I want them to be

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Jane
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by Jane »

Basic RTF does not provide much in the way of control for images, so I suspect that is why the layout is done with tables.

You could always write a short VBA script to strip the tables you do not want.

There are some suggestions here for the scripts
https://www.tek-tips.com/viewthread.cfm?qid=1365534
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My Family History : My Photography "Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad."
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TMG_refugee
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by TMG_refugee »

Victor - I was using the method you describe but the narrative report seems to always be formatted with tables even after opening them in word. I don't think there is a way to convert the tables to the native word format except one by one. There are perhaps 8 - 10 tables per page and hundreds of pages so going table by table seems to be an excessive amount of work.

Jane I will follow your links to see if that will work for me.

I was hoping that FH would have modified their save routines to use native word formats, or at least not tables, like in the Record Detail report.

Thanks to both of you for the suggestions.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

Victor ~ I also tried your suggestion but the MS Word .docx file still held the images in tables just like the .rtf file.
Could you go into more detail about how you manage "to arrange the images and place them where you want them to be".
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by AdrianBruce »

TMG_refugee wrote: 22 Jul 2021 12:38 ... I was hoping that FH would have modified their save routines to use native word formats, or at least not tables, like in the Record Detail report. ...
I suspect that Calico Pie may well think that creating .DOCX (or whatever) files might feel like getting too close to Microsoft, thus upsetting numbers of vociferous open-sourcers, etc. Although .RTF originated with Microsoft, it was intended for interchange and (according to Wikipedia) "most word processors are able to read and write some versions of RTF". Indeed, you don't have to be a vociferous open-sourcer to feel that software producers like CP ought to be neutral.

(I did wonder what facility RTF had for placing images, so when Jane says "Basic RTF does not provide much in the way of control for images", that pretty much confirms my suspicions).
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Jane
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by Jane »

One option might be able to save as HTML and load that into word. From memory that uses divisions which might be easier to adjust.
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tatewise
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

These days I doubt if .DOCX would be considered a purely Microsoft format.
It is an Open Format (like .ODT) supported by most open-source word-processors such as OpenOffice & LibreOffice Writer.

I experimented with the .RTF file exported by FH.
In MS Word it was possible to extract images from the table and reposition & resize them but still save in .RTF format.
In OpenOffice Writer it was possible to do much the same and still retain .RTF format.
So that suggests that images can be held in .RTF outside tables.

Getting MS Word and OpenOfice Writer to understand each other's version of .RTF was unreliable.
But saving from MS Word to .DOC or .DOCX or saving from OpenOffice Writer to .ODT solved that problem.
i.e. After editing in RTF, save in the native product open format, which is understood by other products.

Jane's HTML technique works with both MS Word and OpenOffice Writer and the images are not inside tables, but they are not positioned where the FH Report puts them and are anchored in line as a character so cannot initially be adjusted.
Thus every image must be right-clicked and the Anchor changed before they can be repositioned & resized.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by AdrianBruce »

tatewise wrote: 22 Jul 2021 14:48 ... they are not positioned where the FH Report puts them and are anchored in line as a character so cannot initially be adjusted. ...
Yeah, that's the pain of it. In the FH Report, the text neatly flows round the images and expands to the full page once it's beneath them. That sort of layout is also easy to accomplish in MS Word once you remember which layering option you need for the images. But maybe RTF has nothing like that - hence the difference between PDF and RTF versions of the same report. Maybe.

Interesting what you say, Mike, about .DOCX. If it has such cross-platform support, then my wariness might no longer apply. Especially if RTF is de facto obsolescent.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

Adrian, you may find https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML interesting.
See under Application support for products that support this format.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by AdrianBruce »

Thanks Mike for that pointer. Quite interesting - the article alluded to some of the moans from the anti-MS guys that I remember but many seem to have decided to at least live with MS and / or support their customers' wishes.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by victor »

Mike
I have only just read your message. It has been awhile since I did a narrative report.
Not quite sure what is meant by tables.
If it images of people I just move them to whereever I want them on the page (left, centre or right) make them bigger if need be by moving the corner of the image. If it is a census image I rotate them and enl;arge them to fill a whole page.

Maybe I have misunderstood the question
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by LornaCraig »

Victor, according to your profile you are still using FH V6 (although I think you actually have V7?) Anyway if you have not saved a narrative report as RTF since V6 things may have changed. As far as I remember the V6 RTFs did not put quite so much into tables, although there were some. However I can't remember how pictures were handled.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

Yes, according to the FH 7.0.7 (19545) Victor has FH v7.0.7 so could you please update your Profile.
I would have to boot up FH v6.2.7 to check how it saves Reports to RTF, but if Victor could save a v7.0.7 report he would see the table effect we are discussing; unless perhaps he is using a Picture Location option that happens not to use tables.
i.e. In the Report > Options > Pictures tab, what Picture Location options are you using?
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TMG_refugee
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by TMG_refugee »

Jane,

I was able to save the file as a PDF and then open the PDF and save as a DOC document. The text is then rendered without table but the pictures are still in tables but can be moved around and formatted. My export of the PDF to Word did a single page so this may not be the easiest

A several step process but doable. Thank you.

I also tried the HTML route and word opened it up as a text file with no formatting at all so I think that is not workable for me at this time.

I am using FH 7, Word 2010, and Acrobat Pro 9 - maybe newer version of the software would work better.
Maybe FH can eventually put out the narrative report like they do the Record Report and that will retain the Word ability to reformat.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

I have created Wish List Ref 581Save Report As options for extra file types (DOCX, ODT, etc) that you can Vote for.
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victor
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by victor »

Lorna
I have just read your message I am using the latest FH version 7. I haven't got round to doing a narrative report since the upgrade. Might do one this coming week
I am not a fan of RTF

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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

Victor, please update your FHUG Profile to show you are using FH V7 and not FH V6.2 as it says at present.
Click on your username 'victor', select Profile/Edit profile, choose Family Historian V7, then scroll down to click SUBMIT.

Last Thursday you said: "I save my narrative reports in RTF format then save it again in Word doc which I use to arrange the images and place them where I want them to be." We requested a bit more detail about exactly how you achieved that.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by victor »

Mike
Have just done that. I was not aware of that on my profile.
I notice the profile asks for Facebook, Twitter etc. Do I need to add my details on there too?

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Re: RTF formatting

Post by tatewise »

No, don't add other details, unless you want to encourage users to contact you via those networks.

Updating the Family Historian version in your Profile makes it clearer which FH version your postings relate to without you needing to specify.
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TMG_refugee
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by TMG_refugee »

Jane I followed your suggestion and finally got to trying the VBA approach. That did indeed remove the tables but the format of the remaining text would be more work to fix.

The original format from FH using tables:
RealEstateSell: Jul 15, 1974 (age 29) sold the Coventry house built in August 1971 for $36,000; Coventry,
Tolland, Connecticut16

After deleteing tables:
RealEstateSell:
Jul 15, 1974 (age 29)
sold the Coventry house built in August 1971 for $36,000; Coventry, Tolland, Connecticut16

The footnotes are in superscript.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by Gary Carson »

I have found that if I first save/print the narrative report as a PDF then use my PDF program by Nuance to convert to MS Word I get exactly what you are trying to achieve. The key is hiw your PDF program converts files.
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Re: RTF formatting

Post by AdrianBruce »

Thanks very much for the idea, Gary. I'm from a generation where the whole point of a PDF was that it was fixed, so converting it back into Word isn't a topic that I'd have thought of.

https://lightpdf.com/ looks interesting - it's an online facility and just converted my grandpa's Narrative PDF with its column of images down the right, into a DOCX with the same column of images in the right configuration. (It looks like it is putting the images into a 2nd column on the page - or where it would be - I'm so rusty on interpreting the more obscure parts of Word documents, that I'm not clear what's going on.) It does convert the document into US English (for proofing purposes) but I think that's easy to flip.
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