Introduction
If TX Text Control is new to you, start with the essentials of TX Text Control .NET Server: what the product does, what you can build with it and which building blocks it consists of. With them, you can decide which parts your application needs and where to continue.
What TX Text Control .NET Server Is
TX Text Control .NET Server is a set of components for document processing in .NET applications. You create, load, change and save documents in code on the server, and you can give your users a word processor or a document viewer in the browser. All components share the same document engine, so a document created in one part of your application can be used in any other.
- Current version. The current version is 34.0, released in November 2025, and Service Pack 5, released on September 14, 2026, is its latest service pack.
- NuGet packages. The components are delivered as NuGet packages that support .NET 8, .NET 9 and .NET 10. Licensed developers install them from the Text Control Private NuGet Feed. Angular and React components are available as npm packages.
- Two engines. The Core engine runs on Windows and Linux. The Classic engine runs on Windows only and also loads and saves the legacy Word binary format (DOC). You choose one by the NuGet package you install. Product Architecture explains the differences.
- Hosting. With the Core engine, your application runs on Windows and Linux, including Docker containers and cloud services such as Azure App Services. See Supported Platforms.
- No Office installation. TX Text Control reads and writes the documents itself. You do not need Microsoft Word to convert a DOCX file to PDF, or Adobe Acrobat to import a PDF.
What You Can Build
| Task | Examples | Main components |
|---|---|---|
| Document generation | Invoices, letters, contracts and reports created from a template and JSON data or business objects | MailMerge and ServerTextControl |
| Document conversion and processing | Load DOCX, RTF, HTML or PDF documents, change their content in code and save them in another format | ServerTextControl |
| Editing in the browser | Users edit documents and design templates with a ribbon interface, insert merge fields and form fields, and track changes | Document Editor |
| Viewing, forms and signing in the browser | Users read documents, add annotations, fill out form fields and sign documents without changing the content | Document Viewer |
| Create PDF, PDF/A and accessible PDF (PDF/UA) documents, import PDFs, and sign PDFs digitally with a certificate | ServerTextControl |
The components are designed to be combined. For example, users design a template in the Document Editor, your backend merges it with data from a database and saves the result as PDF, and customers sign the PDF in the Document Viewer.
Building Blocks
TX Text Control .NET Server consists of four main components. Two of them work in your .NET code without a user interface: ServerTextControl creates, loads, changes and saves documents, and MailMerge merges data into templates. Two of them add a user interface to the browser: the Document Editor, an MS Word compatible WYSIWYG editor, and the Document Viewer for viewing, annotating, filling out and signing documents. Their frontends are available for ASP.NET Core, Angular, React, plain JavaScript and Blazor, and their backend runs in your ASP.NET Core application. The Components at a Glance lists where each component runs and which NuGet packages it needs.
A few smaller packages on nuget.org add functionality to the main components. TXTextControl.Markdown.Core adds Markdown load and save capabilities, TXTextControl.PDF.Validation validates PDF/UA documents, and TXTextControl.DocumentServer.ParallelMailMerge runs MailMerge processing in isolated worker processes. See Package Overview.
Other Text Control Products
Text Control offers other products for different kinds of applications:
- TX Text Control .NET for Windows Forms and TX Text Control .NET for WPF are rich text editor and document processing components for Windows desktop applications. TX Text Control ActiveX is the editor component for COM-based Windows desktop applications. Choose TX Text Control .NET Server when documents are processed on a server or edited and viewed in a web application.
- DS Server is an on-premises document processing server. It provides document processing as a ready-to-use backend with a Web API, so you do not implement the document backend yourself. With TX Text Control .NET Server, you build that backend in your own .NET application. DS Server is a separate product with its own packages and documentation.
Before You Start Developing
- Licensed developers install the NuGet packages from the Text Control Private NuGet Feed. The license is included in the packages, so there are no license files to manage and no activation dialogs.
- To evaluate the product, install the trial version on a Windows development machine. Its setup provides the packages in a local package source named Text Control Offline Packages. The trial version is fully featured and valid for 30 days. It adds a trial text to created documents and must not be installed on a production server.
- Licensing is per developer, and production servers need runtime licenses. See Licensing Overview. For commercial questions, contact the Text Control sales team.
Next Steps
- Product Architecture: how the engines, the server-side components and the browser components work together.
- Components: the Document Editor, the Document Viewer,
ServerTextControlandMailMergein detail. - Getting Started: step-by-step tutorials for your first application.
- Installation Guide: system requirements, packages, license configuration and upgrades.