Question

How can I tag a “spot” (this can be a text area or text field) in a word document? I tried putting a plain text content control in my document, but when I looked at the generated XML there was no “alias” for that plain text control. All the code I’ve seen for getting one, needs it to have an alias. What am I doing wrong? And is there another easier way to easily “mark” a spot in a document and retrieve the text that’s in it later? (The user will be entering the text…)

Answer 1

In Visual Studio I was able to use the designer to set the properties of the plain text control. On the properties there is a “tag” property that I set to the name I wanted for my tag. Then using this method I was able to find the control later:

WordprocessingDocument document = WordprocessingDocument.Open(file.OpenBinaryStream(), true);

        var docPart = document.MainDocumentPart;
        // Find the first content control whose Alias property
        // matches the supplied name.
        var sdts = docPart.Document.Descendants<Tag>();
        foreach (var sdt in sdts)
        {
            string value = (string)sdt.Val;

            if (value.Equals(contentControlTag))
            {
                oxe = sdt;
                break;
            }
        }

        return oxe;