In ActiveReports, the RichTextBox control is used to display, insert and manipulate formatted text. It is different from the TextBox control in a number of ways. The most obvious is that it allows you to apply different formatting to different parts of its content.

You can also load an RTF file or an HTML file into the RichTextBox control at design time or at run time, and you can use it to create field merged reports with field placeholders that you replace with values at run time. You can add fields to the text you enter directly in the control by right-clicking and choosing Insert Fields and providing a field name.

For more information, see Load a File into a RichTextBox Control and Mail Merge with RichTextBox.

Important Properties

Property	Description
AutoReplaceFields	If True, any fields in the RTF control are replaced with fields from the data source.
CanGrow	Determines whether ActiveReports should increase the height of the control based on its content.
CanShrink	Determines whether ActiveReports should decrease the height of the field based on its value.
MultiLine	Gets or sets a value that determines whether the RichTextBox prints multiple lines or a single line.
DataField	Gets or sets the field name from the data source to bind to the control.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Key Combination	Action
Enter	New line.
Alt + Enter	Saves modifications and exits edit mode.
Esc	Cancels modifications and exits edit mode.

In the End User Designer, you can disable this feature in the EditModeEntering and EditModeExit events.

Load File Dialog

With the control selected on the report, in the Commands section at the bottom of the Properties window, you can click the Load file command to open the dialog. This allows you to select a file to load into the control at design time. Supported file types are as follows.

Text (*.txt)
RichText (*.rtf)
HTML (*.htm, *.html)

To load a file into the report at run time, use the Load method. For more information, see Load Method.

Supported Tags

HTML Tags

The following HTML tags are supported in the RichTextBox control.

Tip: In order to show special characters in an HTML file loaded into the control, use the character entity reference (for example, è for è or & for &).

Tag	Description	Attributes
<B>	Bold	none
<I>	Italic	none
<P>	Paragraph	align, style
<STRONG>	Strong (looks like bold)	none
<BIG>	Big	none
<SMALL>	Small	none
<PRE>	Preformatted	none
<FONT>	Font	face, size, color, style (see notes for style attributes)
<BODY>	The body tag	background, text, leftmargin
<H1> - <H6>	Heading levels one through six	none
<BR>	Line break	none
<EM>	Emphasized (looks like Italics)	none
<U>	Underlined	none
<IMG>	Image	align, height, src, width
<SUP>	Superscript	none
<SUB>	Subscript	none
<CENTER>	Center alignment	none
<TABLE>	Table	align, border, cellpadding, cellspacing, height, style, width
<TR>	Table row	align
<TH>	Table head	none
<TD>	Table datum	align, border, colspan, rowspan, width
<LI>	List item	none (nested levels automatically use disc, then circle, then square bullets)
<OL>	Ordered list	type
<UL>	Unordered list	type
<STRIKE>	Strike through	none

Style Attribute Properties

RichTextBox Dialog

With the control selected on the report, in the Commands section at the bottom of the Properties window, you can click the Property dialog command to open the dialog.

General

Appearance

Format

Load File Dialog

Supported Tags

RichTextBox Dialog

RichTextBox height