Office File & PDF Document Processing APIs — June 2026 Roadmap (v26.1)
We thank you for your continued support and for sharing your document processing needs and requirements with us. In this blog post, I’ll outline our development and release plans for the first half of 2026.
If you’d like to discuss this roadmap in greater detail or share a business use case that our Office File & PDF API library 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 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:
Safe Word & Excel Document Processing
Our Office File API libraries will include new APIs to securely load and sanitize Microsoft Office(r) files (Word, Excel). These APIs will ship with the following capabilities:
- Remove potentially harmful or malicious content (macros, embedded objects, links, scripts).
- Remove sensitive, hidden, or private data (metadata, comments, tracked changes, optional content, and more).
- 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.
Document Processing Libraries for JAVA
As part of our cross-platform expansion, we are broadening the footprint of DevExpress Office & PDF APIs (moving to the Java platform).
Important note: Once our Java Document Processing Library is released, it will be available as a separate/independent subscription. Java libraries will not be included in our .NET Office & PDF File API library.
The following libraries are expected to be available as an early beta in our v26.1 release cycle (and enhanced incrementally):
- Barcode Generation API — A comprehensive library for generating barcodes (1D and 2D formats) within Java applications. This API will support common symbologies and image output formats making it suitable for labeling and scanning.
- PowerPoint Presentation API — A non-visual PowerPoint processing API that parallels our .NET offering and allows Java developers to programmatically create, modify, and export PPTX files. Early support will focus on slide management, text and shape manipulation, and basic chart support.
- PDF Document API — Core PDF file processing capabilities will be extended to Java and enable automated workflows for PDF generation, manipulation, data extraction, and export. Planned features include document creation, merging, form filling, annotating, and text management.
PDF Processing
New PDF Processing API
We will introduce new high-level APIs for PDF document generation and content management. These new APIs aim to significantly reduce the complexity of PDF document creation/editing and enable more fluent and flexible text-processing.
These new capabilities will allow you to:
- Work with high-level document objects such as paragraphs, text fragments, images, shapes, interactive forms, and annotations.
- Insert, read, search, remove, and format text using semantic PDF elements with full control over font, size, and style properties.
- Work with RTL documents.
- Automatically reflow content when text fragments are inserted/deleted.
- Manually tag document objects.
- Сopy and reuse high-level objects across PDF documents.
PDF/UA-2 Export
To further extend accessibility compliance in automated document workflows, we plan to introduce export options that target the PDF/UA-2 accessibility conformance level. With this capability, developers will be able to create PDFs with appropriate tags, semantics, and structural metadata required for accessibility tools (screen readers, assistive technologies).
PDF/A-4 Export
In v26.1, we expect to extend our PDF Document API’s export capabilities with PDF/A-4 compliance so that you can generate archival PDFs that meet current retention and regulatory requirements.
Excel Spreadsheet API
Excel to PDF/UA Conversion Enhancements
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).
New Excel Functions
We will enhance our Spreadsheet calculation engine by adding support for modern, dynamic array-based Excel functions, including functions like:
- XLOOKUP
- XMATCH
- SORT
- FILTER
- UNIQUE
Presentation API
Charts
In v26.1, the DevExpress Presentation API library will natively support Office/PowerPoint charts. New APIs will allow you to create, manipulate, and customize chart objects inside PowerPoint presentations (PPTX) programmatically. This includes support for:
- Common MS Office chart types
- Chart data initialization and binding
- Data series and axis configuration
- Visual format settings (titles, legends, colors, and more)
You will also be able to open, edit, and export existing PowerPoint presentations that contain charts without content loss.
Export Slides to Images
v26.1 will add the ability to export individual slides to raster and vector image formats:
- BMP
- PNG
- JPEG
- EMF
- SVG
- And more
This feature will allow you to generate thumbnail previews, create image-based slide wrappers for web or mobile consumption, and integrate slides into non-PPTX workflows in both Windows and Unix-based systems.
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.
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.
Maria Nikulina (DevExpress)
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