Convert Rtf to HTML

Question

We have a crystal report that we need to send out as an e-mail, but the HTML generated from the crystal report is pretty much just plain ugly and causes issues with some e-mail clients. I wanted to export it as rich text and convert that to HTML if it's possible.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I would check out this tool on CodeProject RTFConverter. This guy gives a great breakdown of how the program works along with details of the conversion.

Writing Your Own RTF Converter

Answer 2

There is also a sample on the MSDN Code Samples gallery called Converting between RTF and HTML which allows you to convert between HTML, RTF and XAML.

Answer 3

Mike Stall posted the code for one he wrote in c# here :

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/jmstall/writing-an-rtf-to-html-converter-posting-code-in-blogs

Answer 4

UPDATED:

I got home and tried the below code and it does not work. For anyone wondering, the clipboard does not just magically convert stuff like I'd hoped. Rather, it allows an application to sort of "upload" a data object with a variety of paste formats, and then then you paste (which in my metaphor would be the "download") the program being pasted into specifies its preferred format. I personally ended up using this code, which has been recommended previously, and it was enormously easy to use and very effective. After you have imported the code (in VStudio, Project -> Add Existing Files) you then just go html to rtf like this:

return HtmlToRtfConverter.ConvertHtmlToRtf(myRtfString);

or the opposite direction:

return RtfToHtmlConverter.ConvertHtmlToRtf(myHtmlString);

(below is my previous incorrect answer, in case anyone is interested in the chronology of this answer haha)

Most if not all of the above answers provide comprehensive, often Library-based solutions to the problem at hand. I am away from my computer and thus cannot test the idea, but one alternative, cheap and vaguely hack-y method would be the following.

private string HTMLFromRtf(string rtfString)
{
            Clipboard.SetData(DataFormats.Rtf, rtfString);
            return Clipboard.GetData(DataFormats.Html);         
}

Again, not totally sure if this would work, but just messing around with some html on my iPhone I suspect it would. Documentation is here. More in depth explanation/docs RE the getting and setting of data models in the clipboard can be found here.

(Yes I am fully aware I'm here years later, but I assume this question is one which some people still want answered).

Answer 5

If you don't mind getting your hands dirty, it isn't that difficult to write an RTF to HTML converter.

Writing a general purpose RTF->HTML converter would be somewhat complicated because you would need to deal with hundreds of RTF verbs. However, in your case you are only dealing with those verbs used specifically by Crystal Reports. I'll bet the standard RTF coding generated by Crystal doesn't vary much from report to report.

I wrote an RTF to HTML converter in C++, but it only deals with basic formatting like fonts, paragraph alignments, etc. My translator basically strips out any specialized formatting that it isn't prepared to deal with. It took about 400 lines of C++. It basically scans the text for RTF tags and replaces them with equivalent HTML tags. RTF tags that aren't in my list are simply stripped out. A regex function is really helpful when writing such a converter.

Answer 6

I think you can load it in a Word document object by using .NET office programmability support and Visual Studio tools for office.

And then use the document instance to re-save as an HTML document.

I am not sure how but I believe it is possible entirely in .NET without any 3rd party library.

Answer 7

I am not aware of any libraries to do this (but I am sure there are many that can) but if you can already create HTML from the crystal report why not use XSLT to clean up the markup?

Answer 8

You can try to upload it to google docs, and download it as HTML.