Question

MSWORD Writer: Is there a way to control Paragraph Spacing?

  • 19 April 2020
  • 3 replies
  • 5 views
takashi
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Userlevel 2
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Hello,

FME 2020.0.1.0 build 20218 Win64

I'm trying to create MS Word documents with the MSWORD writer. Everything is good for now, except Paragraph Spacing.

Usually we prefer to set "Compact" or "No Paragraph Space" in any documents, but the MSWORD writer seems to always set "Open".

-- from a web page in the Microsoft site

I know that the Paragraph Spacing setting in the base document would be propagated to the destination document if you set the Base Document parameter in the writer, but in the current project I don't want to use a base document.

Is there a way to control the Paragraph Spacing without using Base Document?

3 replies

debbiatsafe
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Userlevel 3
Badge +17

Hi @takashi

If you are using the Paragraph content type, you can try setting the value of the msword_paragraph_style format attribute to No Spacing using an AttributeManager or AttributeCreator after the MSWordStyler. This will set the output paragraph to single line spacing. Hopefully this is suitable for your purposes.

Below is a screenshot showing the differences between the Normal and the No Spacing styles with the same text.

Note: there are a number of different Paragraph styles that the MSWordStyler used to offer in 2019 that are not appearing in 2020 including No Spacing. I have filed an issue with our development team to investigate showing these additional styles in the MSWordStyler.

I hope this information helps.

takashi
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +17

Hi @debbiatsafe, thanks for your input.

I confirmed that the "No Spacing" style makes the resulting paragraphs with no spacing. However, some custom styles including font size, font color set with the MSWordStyler (Style: Custom) seems to be discarded if you assign "No Spacing" or "Normal" to msword_paragraph_style with a subsequent AttributeManager. This isn't ideal.

It would be nice if we could control only Paragraph Spacing, like this.

 

debbiatsafe
Rank
Userlevel 3
Badge +17

Hi @debbiatsafe, thanks for your input.

I confirmed that the "No Spacing" style makes the resulting paragraphs with no spacing. However, some custom styles including font size, font color set with the MSWordStyler (Style: Custom) seems to be discarded if you assign "No Spacing" or "Normal" to msword_paragraph_style with a subsequent AttributeManager. This isn't ideal.

It would be nice if we could control only Paragraph Spacing, like this.

 

Hi @takashi

Thanks for your input! I will add your comments about paragraph spacing as an enhancement request.

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