Switching to HTML Rich Texts and
the New Rich Text Editor

Sage X3 2022 R4 now uses a new HTML rich text editor that can be enabled to use HTML for all rich texts in the application.

Historically, Sage X3 has used RTF for rich texts embedded in the application. Rich texts are used mostly for customer-facing texts attached to documents such as Sales Orders, Invoices, or labels, and also for some internal documents.

RTF is a proprietary format initially promoted by Microsoft® to allow the exchange of rich text between applications in the Office suite and other text-editing software. Although it still occasionally appears in the Microsoft® context, it has been largely superseded by HTML5.

From 2022 R4, the Sage X3 rich texts can now use HTML. This avoids most of the issues that appear when rich texts are translated back and forth from RTF to HTML to be displayed on screen. The HTML scope used by X3 has been adapted to cover only features supported by Crystal Reports for all texts that may appear in a report. This is to guarantee maximum similarity between the report (rendered using Crystal Reports) and the text displayed on screen (rendered by your device’s browser). 

SOLVING RICH TEXT EDITOR ISSUES WITH THE NEW EDITOR

The move to HTML solves all rich text editor issues that were related to the back-and-forth conversion from RTF to HTML, mostly around the differences between rich text features as displayed on screen, and as printed through Crystal Reports.

YOU CAN SWITCH TO HTML PROGRESSIVELY AND PAINLESSLY

From Sage X3 2022 R4, you can activate the flag Use HTML for rich texts in Administration > Global Settings. This enables a new HTML rich text editor in all of Sage X3.

When this is done:

• Any rich text created or modified from that point on will be stored as HTML.
• Existing texts that have not been modified will still be stored as RTF.

This allows you to progressively move to HTML with no disruption to existing rich texts.

However, this requires you to review your custom reports using Crystal Reports designer, to modify the fields that display rich text so they can display both RTF and HTML during the transition phase. This is done simply by modifying the formula used in Crystal Reports to determine how to format a rich text field.

The estimated update work is around 5 to 10 minutes per report.

This work has been done by Sage in the 64 standard reports that contain rich text fields.

Reports that do not use any rich text field do not require any modification.

You can modify the reports before switching to HTML text. Reports will continue displaying RTF as usual.

Read more below to learn how to switch rich text management to HTML. For any other questions about Sage X3, please contact us.