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MS Word as Editor in SAPscript and Smart Forms

Updated Jan 13, 2020

You want to use Microsoft Word as Editor for SAPscript or Smart Forms.

Please note: As of SAP NW 7.0, enhancement package 1 and SAP NW 7.10 SP 05 the MS Word Editor is the only graphical editor available.
You do not need to enable the editor and also cannot disable it.

For prior have a look her:

Before you can use the MS Word Editor you must enable this feature in system.

Call transaction I18N and go to I18N Customizing -> MS Word as Editor. Choose the Help-Button and follow the instructions.

If transaction I18N is not available in your system yet (see 848036), you can also enable this feature via program RSCPINST. Call transaction SE38, enter program RSCPINST and press F8. On the next screen, select Goto -> Set MS Word as Editor.

Note:

Support packages >= SAPKB62060 or SAPKB64018 or SAPKB70009:

  • In 'Option', there is a 'Multi-Character Format Support' checkbox. It improves the point 7 of the restriction section of this note. If this is checked, the character formats are sent from ITF->RTF as hidden text, but there is no real DB data change since the hidden text is filtered from RTF->ITF. This approach just makes it possible to retrieve the multi-character formats in ITF during ITF<->RTF.
  • The hidden text can be shown or hidden depending on the user preference. In menu bar of MS Word, you can see a button looks like '¶(Icon of Paragraph)', it displays as 'Show/Hide ¶(Icon of Paragraph)'. This flag can be also depending on your settings under Tools/Options/View/Formatting marks.
  • Currently, this approach is in pilot phase, when you want to try this approach, please contact component BC-SRV-SCR .

Support packages lower than SAPKB62049 or SAPKB64011:
On the next screen, select Goto -> Set MS Word as SAPscript Editor. Select checkbox MS Word and press 'Activate'. This setting applies to SAPscript and Smart Forms transactions.

Support packages SAPKB62049 or SAPKB64011 and higher:
On the next screen, select Goto -> Set MS Word as Editor. Select checkbox SAPscript/Smart Forms and press 'Activate'. The setting for Smartforms applies to transaction SMARTFORMS only; the setting for SAPscript applies for SAPscript transactions.

MS Word as Editor works both in non-Unicode systems and Unicode systems.

The minimum support packages to use new code page 8805 for MS Word as SAPscript editor to edit Vietnamese texts are:

  • Web Application Server 6.20 Support Package 58 or
  • Web Application Server 6.40 Support Package 16 or
  • Web Application Server 7.00 Support Package 07

Note: Restrictions in non-Unicode Systems

  • With support package lower than SAPKB62049 or SAPKB64011, program RSCPINST limits the MS Word Editor to language Hebrew only. If you want to use the MS Word Editor for other languages, please execute program RSCPSETEDITOR. The steps are the same as the steps of program RSCPINST.
  • With support packages lower than SAPKB62045 or SAPKB64010, function NLS_WORD_ENABLE also limits the MS Word Editor to language Hebrew only. If you want to use MS Word as editor for other languages, please use nls_word_enable.txt which is attached to this Note to modify the function in the system.
  • For the language Hebrew in non-Unicode systems, MS Word as Editor works only if the code page 1810 is used instead of 1800. However, 1810 is an SAP blended code page and is therefore only supported for existing installations and up to  6.40 (see also note 73606). In  7.xx and higher and for new installations use a Unicode system.

Background: Code page 1810 includes the two BIDI control characters which are used in the implementation. You can check the current system code page using report RSCP0013.

The MS Word Editor replaces the PC Editor; the Line Editor can still be used in SAPscript.
Please note the restrictions of the MS Word Editor in section The Microsoft® Word Editor.
In Unicode Systems the MS Word Editor is available for all languages which are installed in the system. Read 42305 for information about how to install languages in SAP systems.

You can also disable the MS Word Editor:

  • With support packages lower than SAPKB62049 or SAPKB64011, deselect checkbox MS Word and press pushbutton 'Activate' again.
  • With support packages, SAPKB62049 or SAPKB64011 and higher deselect checkbox SAPscript/Smart Forms and press pushbutton 'Activate' again.

For further information about how to use the MS Word Editor and the restrictions of the MS Word Editor, please read the following section.

The Microsoft® Word Editor

You use the Microsoft® Word Editor (MS Word Editor) to create and edit:

  • SAPscript texts
  • Smart Forms texts

Integration

You can use the MS Word Editor for all languages which are installed in the system. This applies for both Unicode and non-Unicode systems.
Non-Unicode Systems

Note that Microsoft® Word supports all Unicode characters. This means that Unicode text data can be entered in the MS Word Editor, but characters which are not supported by the system code page of the application server will be filtered when saving the text in the system.

Example:
You write an English text in a non-Unicode Latin-1 system (character setISO8859-1). All text data will be converted to ISO8859-1. If you enter a character which is not included in ISO8859-1 (for example a Japanese character) it will be replaced by '#' during the conversion and displayed '#' after the text has been saved to the database. So, make sure you use only characters which are supported by your system code page! Save the text to the database to make sure that a character is supported.

Pre-Conditions

You use MS Office 2000 or newer or MS Office XP. The MS Word Editor has been installed and activated in the system (if not, contact your system administrator).

Platform

On your front-end, either Windows 200x or Windows XP is installed as operating system.
Language Settings on the PC

Windows 200x: Choose Start -> Control Panel -> Regional Options -> tabstrip 'General'.In section "Language Settings for the System" select the languages you want to use. Select tabstrip 'Input Locales'. Select an input language and press 'Add'. Select the keyboard layout and press 'Apply'. Proceed the same way with other languages you want to install and afterwards press OK.

Windows XP: Choose Start -> Control Panel -> Regional and Language Options -> tabstrip 'Languages'. Select the checkboxes in section "supplemental language support". Press pushbutton 'Details' in section "text services und input languages". Select an input language and the keyboard layout and then press 'Apply'. Proceed the same way with other languages you want to install and afterwards press OK.

Language Settings in Microsoft Office

When you use languages from non-Latin-1 code pages, the languages should be enabled in the MS Office language settings. Choose Programs -> Microsoft Office XXXX -> Microsoft Office Tools -> Microsoft Office XXXX Language Settings. Check 'Enabled languages'. Add all missing languages which you want to use (for example Arabic).

Security

The security level must be set to "Medium" and all installed add-ins and templates must be accepted. In the MS Word Editor menu go to Tools -> Macros -> Security.

Functionality

With the MS Word Editor the relevant functions of the text processing program Microsoft® Word are available:

  • Copy, Cut and Paste
  • Insert text from clipboard
  • Find and Replace
  • Repeat and Undo Actions
  • Spelling, Grammar and Thesaurus
  • Use of SAP Styles and SAP Formatting
  • Translation

If Adobe® Acrobat is installed on your PC, you can convert SAPscript standard texts and Smart Forms text modules to Portable Document Format (PDF). If you use MS® Office 2003, you can convert SAPscript standard texts and Smart Forms text modules to Microsoft Document Imaging (MDI) and to XML format.
Activities

If you use SAPscript, the system automatically opens the Line Editor in the corresponding application. To switch to the MS Word Editor choose Goto -> Change Editor in the Line Editor menu.

If you use the Smart Forms, open the text module you want to create or change and then press the button for the text editor to open the MS Word Editor.
Differences and Restrictions

Comparing to PC editor, there are some differences:

1. Some menu items are not available. Most of these items required the current cursor position in the text or the current formatting information at the cursor position. E.g. it is not possible to change the command at the current cursor position with menu item 'Edit' / 'Command' / 'Change Command...' .

2. In MS Word it is possible to change symbols and commands which are displayed with a gray background. Some changes in symbols and commands, especially when using ITF-syntax, special characters, or entering text that is longer than one line, will cause problems in the conversion of the text back to the SAPscript format ITF as there is no syntax check for symbols in MS Word. A symbol in a command line in ITF will get corrupted by the conversion to RTF.

3. It is not possible to change to another text (menu item 'Text' / 'Other text...') or save text (menu item 'Text' / 'Save As...') using a different language than the current text language.

4. Unlike other editors in SAP Systems, the MS Word integration does not provide a different background colour in display mode than in change mode.
The feature for MS Word here is SAPscript editor, so some standard MS Word functionalities are restricted:

5. Pasting text from the clipboard or dropping objects into MS Word can include many objects like graphics, hyperlinks, tables, number lists, etc. These objects are displayed in MS Word but are lost after saving the text because the SAPscript text format ITF does not support these objects. In some cases these objects can even occur in the resulting ITF text, which is not valid anymore. Importing such objects (through clipboard or using drag&drop) should be avoided.

6. You can only use the paragraph and character formats that are defined in the style sheet or form of ITF that is used by the text. The built-in MS Word format or other user created format cannot be used. For example, the style list in MS Word contains standard styles (like 'Heading 1', 'Normal', etc.) that cannot be converted back to ITF correctly. Please use only the SAPscript styles that are listed in the MS Word style list.As of MS Word XP most of these standard styles are removed from the MS Word style list.

7. Opening an existing ITF text with MS Word in edit mode and leaving it without any changes made to the text may lead to changes in ITF due to conversion to RTF and back. The user will be prompted to save the changes although no action in MS Word has been taken. Known reasons for this are for example:

Combined character formats in ITF, e.g. bold and italic, will be displayed correctly in MS Word but the conversion back to ITF will skip one of the formats.
A character sequence in ITF with leading '<' and trailing '>' not representing a format will be marked with a ITF escape sequence, i.e. '<(>' and '<)>'.

8. The SAPscript text format (ITF) does not support underlined tabulator chars in general. But tabulators in underlined paragraph/character formats are shown as underlined by MS Word. The SAPscript ITF-text generated from MS Word however, will be processed and printed with no underlined tabulators regardless of what can be shown in the MS Word as SAPscript Editor.

9. Using MS Word to put formatted text into a comment/command line should be avoided as ITF cannot handle such formats and the conversion from RTF to ITF therefore, will run into errors.

10. Bold, italic and underline are so called 'toggle' settings in MS Word. This means that e.g. if a paragraph is formatted using a paragraph format that has bold setting and you want to format some selected text in this paragraph with a character format that also has bold setting, you would then see the text to be not bold! After saving and reloading the text it is displayed as bold again as you would expect.

11. The conversion of numbered lists from SAPscript to the MS Word or to thePC editor and backwards may not always work as SAPscript offers more functionality than the MS Word or the PC editor. The use of SAPscript format conversions (transaction SE74) will help in some cases.
 


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