What's New in GrapeCity Documents v3.1

We are pleased to announce the release of GrapeCity Documents v3.1, your line of high-speed APIs for PDF, Excel, Word, and Imaging. This release focuses on enhanced editing features for the end-user.

This release includes several new features and enhancements including:

• How to remove/redact content from PDF Files
• Improvements to existing OM to load and modify professional Word documents
• Enhanced CJK text rendering on images
• Enhanced Templates support in Excel documents
• New PDF editing tools in our Javascript-based PDF Viewer
• And more

Jump to a section:

• GrapeCity Documents for PDF
• GrapeCity Documents for Word
• GrapeCity Documents for Imaging
• GrapeCity Documents for Excel

GrapeCity Documents for PDF

Redact Content from PDF Files

Redaction in PDF documents is an essential function to hide or remove specific confidential information before it is distributed over the web or printed. Since a PDF is not editable, redactions becomes vital to hide or remove the content that is not to be shared. Also, users should not be able to copy/paste the redacted content in other documents. With the new release, GcPdf adds GcPdfDocument.Redact method to remove the content marked for redaction. You can remove content from multiple regions from a PDF document at one go or choose to remove material from a specific area.

With GcPdf, you can find all instances of text like a password, SSN, name, address, or some other sensitive info and mark the content for redaction or removal from the document. You can also provide OverlayText and OverlayFillColor that will appear over the redacted content, once removed from the PDF.

Applying redaction is a feature not easily found in many PDF readers, including the readers available for free. With the new Redact method, you do not have to open each PDF manually in a third-party PDF reader and remove content. Just use the GcPdf API to remove the content in a batch of PDF documents. Also, you get the power of using all supported PDF Features in an API necessary to perform redactions in a report.

The following PDF document redacts a customer's information before sharing for review.

With GcPdf, the redactions can be of any kind. You can wipe the content with color. and add a replacement text, and render it on that location. Also, GcPdf's apply redaction feature will completely wipe out the content from the PDF so that it cannot be fetched with any other PDF tools. This can be difficult to do through a UI in Acrobat (the free version of which does not include the Apply redaction feature).

With the new release, our JavaScript-based GrapeCity Documents PDF Viewer includes a feature to redact content from PDF Documents (through annotation editing tools), which are configured by connecting the viewer to GcPdf on the server.

Visit our demo for more details.

Help | Demo

Extract Signature Information in an Existing PDF

Sometimes, you need to extract signature information from a digitally signed PDF document and use that information to check the validity of a signature.

GcPdf introduces Signature.Content property that allows you to retrieve additional information from Signature's binary data. The information provides the parameters from its issuance and can be informational. However, you may need to verify the specific fields in the certificate. For example, a serial number lets you to know if you are referencing the correct certificate (it is always helpful to keep a check on the validity of the certificate).

The Not After, Not Before fields help troubleshoot other problems that may occur due to the binding dates of the certificate.

The following are the main fields (in addition to many other fields) that you can extract from a certificate:

• Issuer
• IssuerName
• NotAfter
• NotBefore
• PrivateKey
• PublicKey
• RawData
• SerialNumber
• SignatureAlgorithm
• Subject
• SubjectName
• Thumbprint
• Version

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GrapeCity Documents PDF Viewer

New Editing Tools

Do you have a PDF report that you want to send for review to your stakeholders who would need to make changes to the document?

Do you need to modify PDF documents online and save it on the client without wait time to the server?

Do you need to design a feedback PDF form so your customers can fill it out and submit, using only a single tool?

This release offers a tool that allows you to view, review, edit PDF documents, design PDF Forms, save, and submit PDF Forms from a single viewer. The enhanced PDF Viewer includes several new editing tools: Annotation Editor, a Form Editor, and additional editing features.

These new features allow you to create a full workflow of loading, editing, designing, reviewing, and saving PDF documents and PDF forms within your apps.

Read the post on the Annotation, Redact, and Form Editor for PDFs.

GrapeCity Documents for Word

Find and Replace Text

GcWord adds the support of Find and Replace text using the new RangeBaseFindReplaceExtensions class. You can not only search simple text but also find and replace pattern-based text like regex patterns or unique tokens (and even search for text-based on specific formatting).

With batch processing of hundreds of Word documents, you can use the find and replace methods as a quick way to find/replace a particular portion of text/patterns/formatted text over those documents.

For example, if you have hundreds of Word documents that include a company email ID, and your company changes it to another address, you can use the GcWord API to load the Word documents. Find the email ID by pattern, and replace the email IDs in each document in only a few seconds!

In the example below, an organization sending a procurement letter has designed a Word template with placeholders of data fields. They want the Word API to recognize the placeholders, and replace it with the right set of data.

// Placeholders and sample data:
(string placeholder, string data)[] placeholderData =
            {
                ("__%c_name%__", "Nancy Davolio"),
                ("__%c_title%__", "Chief Procurement Officer"),
                ("__%c_phone%__", "555-543-5432"),
                ("__%c_url%__", "www.acmeinc.com"),
                ("__%c_address%__", "5432 Street West, Townsvilla, State 54321"),
                ("__%to_name%__", "Mark"),
                ("__%dlr_name%__", "AMA Ltd"),
                ("__%order_no%__", "8393"),
            };

// Load the document:
var doc = new GcWordDocument();
doc.Load(Path.Combine("Resources", "WordDocs", "ProcurementLetterTpl.docx"));

foreach ((string placeholder, string data) pair in placeholderData)
FindReplace.Replace(doc.Body, pair.placeholder, pair.data);

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Support for Textboxes

You can now add text boxes to your Word documents using the new Shapes and TextFrame objects. Using this feature, you can apply various formatting properties to the text. The TextFrame object helps you render text on a shape. If you have additional text that does not fit in the TextFrame, you can make use of LinkedTextFrame to flow the main TextFrame content into it. With GcWord, you can add, modify, or delete text boxes from Word documents.

You can add unique text anywhere in your document to emphasize a key point or apply unique properties, like TextOrientation (rotating the text), TextWrap, WordWrap, and WrapFormat, on the text to get the user's attention. Add labels, tags, or small quotes as text boxes to make your text look standout.

(Note: In v3.1, exporting Textboxes to PDF is not supported).

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GrapeCity Documents for Imaging

Render Special CJK Characters

GcImaging adds GrapeCity.Documents.Text.TextFormat.EnableFontHinting and GrapeCity.Documents.Text.Font.EnableHinting properties to enhance support for rendering specific CJK characters on Images.

To support CJK glyphs, GcImaging adds support for special true-type features (called hinting for drawing glyphs). This feature is helpful for the far-east Asian audience, using CJK text in PDF files. While hinting instructions can also help to improve the general text on the PDF files, these instructions can be used (especially in CJK fonts) to reuse some glyph parts in different glyphs, regardless of the font size. The feature is also supported when converting PDF documents to images (through GcPdf).

Visit Help | Demo

GrapeCity Documents for Excel

We add even more support for Excel features and additional functionalities to existing API to help you generate full Excel reports.

The main highlights of this release:

• Enhanced Templates support to create Excel reports with charts, images, and more
• Export Excel objects to images
• Support password-protected workbook and worksheet
• Support alignment of a Shape's TextFrame
• Add image to a specific range
• Support Gradient Fill Type in Shapes
• Access charts, shapes or image by name
• Chart and PDF enhancements
• More features for SpreadJS integration

Read the full GcExcel release.

What do you think about the new features? Please submit your feedback below.