How-to: Remove text from Word document footer using C#

Question

I'm trying to remove a footer from a Word document using C# 4. The footer looks like this:

Page 1 April 18, 2012

Actually, this the text for the footer when displayed in Word VBA:

Page 1 ( April 18, 2012

There's actually a bullet character between "Page 1" and "April". In the end the footer should look like this:

April 18, 2012

Anyway, in Word VBA, I'm able to do it using this code:

Dim rngFtr As Range
Set rngFtr = ActiveDocument.Sections(1).Footers(wdHeaderFooterPrimary).Range
rngFtr.Collapse wdCollapseStart
rngFtr.MoveStart wdParagraph, 1
rngFtr.MoveEnd wdWord, 4
rngFtr.Delete

I tried the same thing in C# but it removes the footer entirely. Here's my code in C# 4: using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application ap = new Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application();
Document doc = ap.Documents.Open(docFile.FullName, ReadOnly: false, Visible: false);
doc.Activate();
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Range ftrRng =
    doc.Sections[1].Footers[WdHeaderFooterIndex.wdHeaderFooterPrimary].Range;
ftrRng.Collapse(WdCollapseDirection.wdCollapseEnd);
ftrRng.MoveStart(WdUnits.wdParagraph, 1);
ftrRng.MoveEnd(WdUnits.wdWord, 4);
ftrRng.Delete();

ap.Documents.Close(SaveChanges: false, OriginalFormat: false, RouteDocument: false);

((_Application) ap).Quit(SaveChanges: false, OriginalFormat: false, RouteDocument: false);
    System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.ReleaseComObject(ap);

I even tried other ways to get rid of "Page 1" & the bullet, such as:

var replaceText = string.Empty;
object mis = System.Type.Missing;
var targetFooterText =
    doc.Sections[1].Footers[WdHeaderFooterIndex.wdHeaderFooterPrimary].Range.Text.ToString().Substring(1, 10);
doc.Sections[1].Footers[WdHeaderFooterIndex.wdHeaderFooterPrimary].Range.Find.Execute(
    targetFooterText,
    ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis,
    replaceText,
    ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis, ref mis);

This doesn't do anything.

Please let me know what I'm doing wrong. Thank you in advance.

I'm not sure if this is important, but the bullet is a Unicode-2022.

Here's a screen cap of the document footer. I just need to remove the text "Page 1" & bullet and replace it with the date. The rest should remain as is.

enter image description here

Denys Wessels Denys Wessels · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-20T06:19:15

Try the example below, it does the following:

Extract all the text from the footer range
Remove the "Page" string from the text

Set the footer range text to the previous value minus the "Page"

    using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;

    Word.Document document = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveDocument;

    Word.Range footerRange =
        document.Sections[1].Footers[Word.WdHeaderFooterIndex.wdHeaderFooterPrimary].Range;

    string rangeText = footerRange.Text;

    if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(rangeText) && rangeText.Contains("Page"))
    {
        //Now set the footer Range Text to the new value minus the "Page"
        //Note: Edit as required because the page number may not always be one character
        string newValue = rangeText.Remove(rangeText.IndexOf("Page"), 6);
        footerRange.Text = newValue;
    }

How-to: Remove text from Word document footer using C#

2 Answers