How to Preserve string with formatting in OpenXML Paragraph, Run, Text?

Question

I am following this structure to add text from strings into OpenXML Runs, Which are part of a Word Document.

The string has new line formatting and even paragraph indentions, but these all get stripped away when the text gets inserted into a run. How can I preserve it?

Body body = wordprocessingDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body;

String txt = "Some formatted string! \r\nLook there should be a new line here!\r\n\r\nAndthere should be 2 new lines here!"

// Add new text.
Paragraph para = body.AppendChild(new Paragraph());
Run run = para.AppendChild(new Run());
run.AppendChild(new Text(txt));

Side note: paragraph with new lines inside sounds very strange to me. Are you sure that is what you need to achieve at the end? — Alexei Levenkov

petelids petelids · Accepted Answer · 2016-10-25T19:15:33

You need to use a Break in order to add new lines, otherwise they will just be ignored.

I've knocked together a simple extension method that will split a string on a new line and append Text elements to a Run with Breaks where the new lines were:

public static class OpenXmlExtension
{
    public static void AddFormattedText(this Run run, string textToAdd)
    {
        var texts = textToAdd.Split(new[] { Environment.NewLine }, StringSplitOptions.None);

        for (int i = 0; i < texts.Length; i++)
        {
            if (i > 0)
                run.Append(new Break());

            Text text = new Text();
            text.Text = texts[i];
            run.Append(text);
        }
    }
}

This can be used like this:

using (WordprocessingDocument wordDoc = WordprocessingDocument.Open(@"c:\somepath\test.docx", true))
{
    var body = wordDoc.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body;

    String txt = "Some formatted string! \r\nLook there should be a new line here!\r\n\r\nAndthere should be 2 new lines here!";

    // Add new text.
    Paragraph para = body.AppendChild(new Paragraph());
    Run run = para.AppendChild(new Run());

    run.AddFormattedText(txt);
}

Which produces the following output:

How to Preserve string with formatting in OpenXML Paragraph, Run, Text?

1 Answers