Portable Document Format (PDF), is a format recommended for printing and for preserving formatting. You can use the PDFRenderingExtension to render your report in this format. With the PDF rendering extension, you can use features such as font linking, digital signatures, and end user-defined characters (EUDC). These features are only available in the Professional Edition of ActiveReports.

PDF Rendering Properties

ActiveReports offers a number of options to control how reports render to PDF.

PDF Print Presets Properties

ActiveReports allows you to preset the printing properties for PDF report exports using the PrintPresets class. This prepopulates the print settings in the Print dialog box. Please see Use PDF Printing Presets for more information.

PDF Features

Interactivity

PDF is considered the best format for printing and it also supports interactive features like Document Map, Bookmarks, and Hyperlinks. However, in case you have any data hidden (like in a drill-down report) at the time of rendering, it does not show up in the output. Therefore, it is recommended to expand all toggle items prior to rendering.

Editable PDF: InputField Control

In Page and RDLX reports, you can use the InputField report control. This control provides support for editable fields in an exported PDF report file where the InputField’s value can be modified.

There are two types of InputField - Text and Checkbox, which you can set in the InputType property. Each type has its own set of properties: the Text type of the InputField control gets the set of properties of the TextBox control. If the Checkbox type is selected, then the new control inherits the set of properties of the CheckBox control. 

Tagged PDF

You can generate PDFs with tagging on the report content by setting the AccessibleDescription property of the report controls: Bullet, Barcode, Chart, Image, Line, Map, Shape, Sparkline, and FormattedText controls; and all custom report items. The PDF versions that support tagged PDFs conforming with the PDF/UA standard are PDF/A-1a, PDF/A-2a, PDF/A-2u, PDF/A-3a, PDF/A-3u, and PDF/UA-1.

PDF/A Support Limitations

• The NeverEmbedFonts property is ignored, so all fonts of a report are embedded into the PDF document.
• The Security.Encrypt property is ignored and the PDF export behaves as if this property is always set to False.
• The OnlyForPrint property is ignored and the PDF export behaves as if this property is always set to False.
• The DocumentToAddBeforeReport and DocumentToAddAfterReport properties of the PDF Rendering Extension settings are ignored.
• Transparent images lose their transparency when exported to PDF/A-1.
• External hyperlinks are exported as plain text.

Export Report using PDF Rendering Extension

The following steps provide an example of rendering a report in PDF format.

1. Create a new Visual Studio project.
2. In the New Project dialog that appears, select ActiveReports 18 Windows Forms Application and specify a name for the project in the Name field.
3. Click OK to create a new ActiveReports 18 Page Report. By default, a Page report is added to the project.
4. Add a reference to MESCIUS.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf package in the project.
5. On the Form.cs or Form.vb that opens, double-click the title bar to create the Form_Load event.
6. Add the following code inside the Form_Load event.

' Provide the Page report you want to render.
Dim rptPath As New IO.FileInfo("..\..\PageReport1.rdlx")
Dim pageReport As New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath)

' Create an output directory.
Dim outputDirectory As New System.IO.DirectoryInfo("C:\MyPDF")
outputDirectory.Create()
                        
' Provide settings for your rendering output.
Dim pdfSetting As New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings()
' Set the rendering extension and render the report.
Dim pdfRenderingExtension As New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension()
Dim outputProvider As New GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory,System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name))

' Overwrite output file if it already exists
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = True

pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting)

// Provide the Page report you want to render.
System.IO.FileInfo rptPath = new System.IO.FileInfo(@"..\..\PageReport1.rdlx");
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport pageReport = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.PageReport(rptPath);

// Create an output directory.
System.IO.DirectoryInfo outputDirectory = new System.IO.DirectoryInfo(@"C:\MyPDF");
outputDirectory.Create();

// Provide settings for your rendering output.
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings pdfSetting = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.Settings();

// Set the rendering extension and render the report.
GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension pdfRenderingExtension = new
        GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Export.Pdf.Page.PdfRenderingExtension();

GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider outputProvider = new GrapeCity.ActiveReports.Rendering.IO.FileStreamProvider(outputDirectory,
        System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(outputDirectory.Name));

// Overwrite output file if it already exists
outputProvider.OverwriteOutputFile = true;

pageReport.Document.Render(pdfRenderingExtension, outputProvider, pdfSetting);