How to specify a new line in an expression rule for a Word report?

Hi Jack Ferguson, can you shed some light on how are you trying to accomplish what you describe above? Assuming you are using the Word Doc From Template smart service, did you try to add a carriage return where do you want the new lines to be added by adding a char(10)?

char(10) carriage returns won't render as anything in a Word document, unfortunately.  What Jack will need to do is inject the wordML newline character in between lines.  It's pretty easy to do, after the hurdle of figuring out the syntax.

Mike,

If I add that wordML character into an expression rule will Word still read it correctly?

Edit: I gave it a try and it works (once I remove the semicolons). Thanks!

For any newline character you want to inject, you'll need to construct the wordML needed to first break out of the current plaintext (i forget off the top of my head, but it starts with something like "</w:t>", followed by the linebreak i.e. "<w:br/>", followed by a new text command i.e. "<w:t>".  At the moment I can't find my saved rules that contained this stuff, but if you search back through old posts of mine you might be able to find an old export package I'd shared for "multi-column grid in Word", which includes various tools including this one.

Either way, I suggest you define the linebreak operator in its own expression rule, for future-proofing.

In addition to what Mike said, what you want to do is insert Open Office XML syntax. If you want to find out how to create something in word via XML:

1. Create a new Word document and create the syntax in question, e.g. bolded text, highlighted, bullets, etc.
2. Save the Word document AS an XML document.
3. View the XML document (such as in Notepad++) and copy portions of the XML into an Appian rule.

For example my bolded Appian expression is:
"<w:pPr>
<w:rPr>
<w:b/>
<w:bCs/>
</w:rPr>
</w:pPr>
<w:r>
<w:rPr>
<w:b/>
<w:bCs/>
</w:rPr>
<w:t>"&ri!textToBold&"</w:t>
</w:r>"