File & Document Processing APIs (Office/PDF File APIs) — Year-End Roadmap (v25.2)
Thank you for your continued support and for sharing your document processing needs and requirements with us. In this blog post, I'll share our development/release plans for the second half of 2025. If you’d like to discuss this roadmap in greater detail or share a business use case that our Office File API product does not currently address, feel free to submit your feedback via the DevExpress Support Center. We’ll be happy to follow up.
The information contained within this blog post details our current/projected development plans. Please note that this information is being shared for INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY and does not represent a binding commitment on the part of Developer Express Inc. This roadmap and the features/products listed within it are subject to change. You should not rely on or use this information to help make a purchase decision about Developer Express Inc products.
Roadmap Updates
Our year-end roadmap will be updated regularly to reflect development progress. As we get closer to the release, we expect to add additional items and modify the status of planned features. Look for the following labels next to every feature:
DevExpress MCP Server for AI-Powered Documentation Access
We will introduce an MCP server that connects GitHub Copilot Chat, Cursor, and other MCP-compatible AI tools directly to our comprehensive documentation database. The server will provide instant access to over 300,000 help topics through natural language queries within your IDE. This will allow you and AI coding agents such as Claude Code to access current DevExpress documentation directly within the AI assistant's context.
Safe Document Processing (Discuss This Feature)
Our Office/PDF File API libraries will include new APIs to securely load and sanitize PDF and Office files (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint formats). These APIs will ship with the following capabilities:
- Remove potentially harmful or malicious content (macros, embedded objects, links, scripts, etc).
- Remove sensitive, hidden, or private data (metadata, comments, tracked changes, optional content, etc).
- Limit file size, complexity, or structure depth when uploading or saving files.
These enhancements will help ensure documents are safe to share and compliant with internal data protection policies.
AI-powered Document Processing (Discuss This Feature)
We will introduce a new set of AI-powered file and document APIs designed to enhance productivity/streamline document workflows across the entire DevExpress Office/PDF File API suite.
These intelligent services will allow you to integrate advanced language models directly into document processing scenarios and leverage capabilities such as:
- Summarization – Automatically generate concise summaries of Word, PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint documents.
- Translation – Translate content between languages and preserve original document formatting and structure.
- Proofreading – Detect and correct grammar, spelling, and style issues across document content.
- Contextual Q&A – Ask questions about the content of a document and receive targeted responses.
- And more.
Key capabilities:
- Supports Word (DOCX), Excel (XLSX), PowerPoint (PPTX), and PDF file formats.
- Seamless integration with the document object model (DOM) and structured document elements (paragraphs, shapes, cells, etc).
- Real-time document editing and updates based on AI-generated suggestions.
Document Accessibility & Compliance
PDF/A Processing Enhancements (Discuss This Feature)
With v25.2, we will enhance PDF/A file processing capabilities (import, edit, and save) when using our PDF Document API. These improvements will help ensure that files remain PDF/A-compliant after modifications. We will also introduce APIs to read a document’s PDF/A conformance level and reset compliance status as needed.
Word to PDF/UA Conversion — Form Field Tagging
With our next release, DevExpress Word-processing tools will automatically add accessible tags for PDF form fields when users export Word documents with Content Controls to PDF/UA.
Excel to PDF/UA Conversion Enhancements (Discuss This Feature)
We’ll enhance our Excel to PDF/UA conversion engine to address accessibility issues related to graphical object tagging and artifact generation (for decorative content).
PDF 2.0 & PDF/UA-2 Support (Research Phase)
During our v25.2 release cycle, we will begin work to support PDF 2.0 and PDF/UA-2 formats across the entire DevExpress Office File API product line.
Once our research phase is complete, we'll prioritize implementation steps to align our document processing libraries with modern standards and regulatory requirements.
Presentation API
Document Rendering Enhancements
We will refine our internal document layout engine to offer precise rendering of PowerPoint presentation content. This includes enhancements in how text, shapes, and layout elements are measured and drawn when you print or export presentations to PDF.
Tables (Discuss This Feature)
We plan to support PowerPoint table elements and introduce APIs to programmatically create and format structured tables inside slides.
This feature will include the following capabilities:
- Insert tables with a specified number of rows and columns.
- Manage table, row, column, and cell operations (insert, delete, resize, format).
- Fill, modify, and clear table data.
- Merge and split table cells.
- Apply table styles and format individual cells (borders, shading, text alignment, background fills and more).
Themes (Discuss This Feature)
To improve presentation design consistency, we will support PowerPoint themes. This will include the ability to:
- Apply and manipulate built-in or custom themes programmatically.
- Modify a theme's color scheme.
- Reset theme formatting.
OpenXml-based File Formats (Discuss This Feature)
We'll expand the range of supported PowerPoint file formats with the following OpenXml-based extensions:
- POTX — PowerPoint Template
- POTM — PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Template
- PPTM — PowerPoint Macro-Enabled Presentation
PDF Document API
PDF Compression & Optimization
Image Compression Enhancements (Discuss This Feature)
We'll introduce support for additional image compression options. This will include settings for grayscale conversion to reduce file size when color fidelity is not required.
Combine & Compress PDF Object Streams (Discuss This Feature)
With v25.2, our PDF Processing API will include functionality to merge and compress PDF object streams to remove redundancy in internal data structures and reduce file overhead.
This capability will optimize both output file size and PDF load performance. Additionally, this will address file size growth issues when you merge multiple PDFs with pre-compressed streams into a single file.
Use Custom Fonts for PDF AcroForm Fields (Discuss This Feature)
We'll introduce the ability to use custom fonts (not registered in the system) for PDF fields (text boxes, signatures, etc) when using the DevExpress PDF Document API library for document generation or modification. Custom fonts registered in the DXFontRepository will be embeddable at runtime and applied to newly created or existing fields via the document model.
Word Document API
Enhanced Master-Detail Mail Merge (Discuss This Feature)
We will extend our Word Processing APIs and support mail merge operations based on hierarchical (master-detail) data sources. This feature will allow developers to bind nested collections directly to Word templates using standard merge field syntax. With this enhancement, you will be able to:
- Define repeatable detail sections using region-based merge fields.
- Use a single template to generate multi-level reports, invoices, or personalized documents.
- Perform complex document generation from hierarchical business objects (for example, Customer → Orders, Order → Items).
- Integrate with custom data sources.
Spreadsheet Document API
OLE Object Support Enhancements (Discuss This Feature)
In our end-of-year release, we will give you the capability to manage OLE Objects (load, modify, and save) in binary file formats:
- XLS
- XLSB
New Excel Functions (Discuss This Feature)
We will enhance our Spreadsheet calculation engine by adding support for modern, dynamic array-based Excel functions, including functions like:
- XLOOKUP
- XMATCH
- FILTER
- UNIQUE
- And more
Your Feedback Counts
We appreciate your continued support. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, if you have Office/PDF File API-related suggestions or requests, please submit a support ticket via the DevExpress Support Center — we'll be happy to review your feedback and follow up.
v25.1 - What’s New
If you have yet to review the features/capabilities introduced in our most recent major update, please visit the following webpage and let us know what you think of this release by responding to our online survey: Explore Our Newest Features (v25.1).
Free DevExpress Products - Get Your Copy Today
The following free DevExpress product offers remain available. Should you have any questions about the free offers below, please submit a ticket via the DevExpress Support Center at your convenience. We'll be happy to follow-up.
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