ER carriage return

Today we present a small VERY USEFUL tip when inserting a multiline field into a Word document.

We are going to deal with 2 similar cases with different origins, but with the same final solution:

1. In a field of the ER model we associate by means of labels a text that we want to be displayed in several lines.

2. We create a field in ER and associate a multiline field to it (for example, an address)

In both cases, if we do not configure the elements correctly, we will obtain the same result; all the text on a single line.

Solution

For the first case we need to do an additional step before anything else. Let's put for example that we want to show 2 labels, one on each line. We want a final result in the Word document like this:

Preparation
Execution

To do this, in the ER formula, we will introduce the character associated with the line break CHAR(10) by means of a function. Therefore, the formula will be as follows:

"Preparation" & CHAR(10) & "Execution"

With this simple formula we are already telling our intermediate XML that there is a line break between the two words.

At this point we are at the intersection between case 1 and 2. We already have that multi-line element inside our intermediate XML. Still, in our final Word document we won't see that line break unless we set the control's properties right.

So we will mark the check "Allow carriage returns (several paragraphs)" that is disabled by default:

With these simple steps we will no longer waste time looking for a way to display our elements with line breaks.