What's New in Document Solutions for Word v9

Support for RD Fields in Document Field Updating

The v9.0 release expands DsWord’s field-processing engine with full support for the RD (Referenced Document) field, an important feature for customers working with large, multi-file Word projects such as legal filings, reports, academic materials, and publishing workflows.

The RD field allows a Word document to reference other DOCX files when building a Table of Contents (TOC), Table of Authorities (TOA), or Index, enabling authors to generate unified references across multiple documents. With v9.0, DsWord now automatically recognizes RD fields during field updates, retrieves referenced entries, and correctly merges headings, citations, and index entries into the parent document.

Why RD Field Support Matters

Many enterprise and legal Word documents are built using a master document with multiple sub-documents, each containing its own headings, citations, and index entries. The RD field makes it possible to:

• Maintain long documents as smaller, manageable files
• Generate a single consolidated TOC, TOA, or Index
• Reference headings and entries across multiple files
• Create dynamic documents that update automatically

With v9.0, DsWord brings this capability to automated workflows and server-side document generation.

New RD Field API: RdFieldOptions

To support this workflow, DsWord adds the new RdFieldOptions class, which provides full access to RD field definitions:

public class RdFieldOptions : BaseFieldOptions, IFieldOptions
{
    public string FilePath { get; set; }
    public bool Relative { get; set; }
}

Developers can create, read, modify, or save RD fields from both SimpleField and ComplexField structures, allowing DsWord to integrate seamlessly into document assembly pipelines.

Document Path Awareness for Relative RD Fields

The v9.0 update also adds a new property to GcWordDocument:

public string Path { get; set; }

This property enables DsWord to resolve relative RD file paths when updating fields. It is automatically populated when loading or saving a document with a file path, but must be set manually when loading from a stream.

This enhancement ensures that headings, citations, and index terms can be gathered correctly across referenced documents.

Example: Consolidating TOC, TOA, and Index Entries Across Multiple Files

// Create referenced sub-documents...
// (each containing headings, authorities, and index entries)
// Create the main document
var doc = new GcWordDocument();
doc.Path = Path.Combine(Directory.GetCurrentDirectory(), @"rd-new.docx");
// Add TOC, TOA, and Index fields
var toc = new TocFieldOptions(doc);
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Table of Content", doc.Styles[BuiltInStyleId.Title])
        .AddComplexField(toc);
var toa = new ToaFieldOptions(doc);
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Table of Authorities", doc.Styles[BuiltInStyleId.Title])
        .AddComplexField(toa);
var index = new IndexFieldOptions(doc);
index.PageNumbers.Separator = "\t";
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Index", doc.Styles[BuiltInStyleId.Title])
        .AddComplexField(index);
// Reference the sub-documents using RD fields
for (int i = 1; i <= 2; i++)
{
    var rd = new RdFieldOptions(doc)
    {
        FilePath = $"sub{i}.docx",
        Relative = true
    };
    doc.Body.AddParagraph().AddComplexField(rd);
}
// Update all fields (TOC, TOA, Index + RD)
doc.UpdateFields();
doc.Save(doc.Path);

When UpdateFields() is called, DsWord now:

• Loads each referenced sub-document
• Extracts headings, citation entries, and index markers
• Merges them into the parent document’s TOC, TOA, and Index
• Produces a fully consolidated reference structure

With RD field support, DsWord v9.0 gives developers deeper control over complex Word document structures, making it easier to generate consolidated output and automate professional-grade document assembly workflows.

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Update DATE and TIME Fields with Word-Compatible Formatting

In v9.0, DsWord adds full support for updating DATE and TIME fields programmatically, including rich formatting options that closely follow Microsoft Word’s behavior. This enhancement makes it easy to insert “current date/time” fields into server-generated documents and keep them synchronized just by calling UpdateFields(), no manual edits required.

Whether you’re generating contracts, reports, letters, or timestamped exports, you can now control how dates and times are displayed across a wide range of languages and calendar systems.

Rich Date/Time Formatting via Options Classes

To support flexible, Word-like formatting, DsWord introduces two new base classes:

• TimeFormatOptions – Common options for formatting date/time strings
• DateFormatOptions – Extends TimeFormatOptions with calendar-specific settings

These classes expose a DateTimeFormat string, which supports a broad set of format tokens similar to those used by Word (e.g., d, dd, MMM, MMMM, yyyy, hh:mm, AM/PM, localized era and calendar tokens, and more). This allows you to mimic the same formatting users see when inserting DATE/TIME fields in Word.

DateFormatOptions also lets you target specific calendar systems:

• UseHijriLunarCalendar
• UseSakaEraCalendar
• UseUmAlQuoraCalendar

Together, these options give you fine-grained control over how dates and times are rendered across different regions and locales.

Note: Supported languages currently include:

"ar-SA", "bn-BD", "cs-CZ", "de-DE", "el-GR", "en-US", "es-ES", "fa-IR", "fr-FR", "he-IL", "hi-IN", "id-ID", "it-IT", "ja-JP", "ko-KR", "nl-NL", "pl-PL", "pt-PT", "ro-RO", "ru-RU", "sv-SE", "th-TH", "tr-TR", "uk-UA", "vi-VN", "zh-CN", "zh-HK", "zh-MO", "zh-SG", "zh-TW".

The numbered-item format is not supported in this release.

New Field Option Classes: TimeFieldOptions and DateFieldOptions

Building on the formatting base classes, DsWord v9.0 adds two field-specific types:

• TimeFieldOptions – For TIME fields
  • A TIME field defines the current date and time, with emphasis on time formatting.
• DateFieldOptions – For DATE fields
  • A DATE field also defines the current date and time, typically used for document headers, signatures, and print dates.
  • Includes UseLastCreatedFormat to honor the last date-time format used by the hosting application when inserting new DATE fields.

These classes are designed to integrate cleanly with existing DsWord field APIs, and they can be created from a GcWordDocument, SimpleField, or ComplexField, making them useful both for new documents and for updating existing ones.

Example: Insert and Update DATE and TIME Fields

The following example shows how to create default and custom-formatted fields and then update them to the current date and time:

GcWordDocument doc = new GcWordDocument();

// TIME field with default settings
var time = new TimeFieldOptions(doc);
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Time: ").AddComplexField(time);

// DATE field with default settings
var date = new DateFieldOptions(doc);
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Date: ").AddComplexField(date);

// DATE field with custom date-time format
date.DateTimeFormat = "'Today is ' d MMMM yyyy HH:mm:ss";
doc.Body.AddParagraph("Custom date-time format: ").AddComplexField(date);

// Update all fields to show the current date and time
doc.UpdateFields();
doc.Save("date-time.docx");

With this API, you can:

• Insert DATE/TIME fields in templates and update them server-side
• Localize date and time output based on document language
• Match existing Word-based formatting conventions in automated workflows

DsWord v9.0 makes it significantly easier to keep dates and times accurate, consistent, and region-aware across all your generated Word documents.

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