Re: Copy OpenXmlElement between documents

Hi,

I have two Word documents (WordprocessingDocument), and I want to replace the contents of an element in the first with the contents in the body of the second one.

This is what I'm doing right now:

var docA = WordprocessingDocument.Open(docAPath, true);
var docB = WordprocessingDocument.Open(docBPath, true);

var containerElement = docA.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body
.Descendants<SdtBlock>()
.FirstOrDefault(sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.Descendants<SdtAlias>().Any(alias => alias.Val == containerElementName))
.SdtContentBlock;

var elementsToCopy = docB.MainDocument.Part.Document.Body.ChildElements.Where(e => e.LocalName != "sectPr"));

containerElement.RemoveAllChildren();
containerElement.Append(elementsToCopy);


Basically I get the container (an SdtBlock) from the first document using its alias to identify it, then get all the children of the second element (removing the SectionProperties which I don't want to copy) and then try to add those to the container element.

The problem is that I'm getting this exception:

Cannot insert the OpenXmlElement "newChild" because it is part of a tree.

When I invoke the last line on that code (the Append).

Any ideas on how can I achieve what I want?

Thanks

Hi

Just a small tweak needed for your code - you need to clone the OpenXmlElements you're appending so they're not tied into their existing tree:

var containerElement = docA.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.Descendants<SdtBlock>().FirstOrDefault(
    sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.Descendants<Alias>().Any(alias => alias.Val == containerElementName))
    .SdtContentBlock;

IEnumerable<OpenXmlElement> elementsToCopy = docB.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.ChildElements.Where(e => e.LocalName != "sectPr");

List<OpenXmlElement> clonedElements = new List<OpenXmlElement>();

foreach (OpenXmlElement element in elementsToCopy)
{
    clonedElements.Add((OpenXmlElement)element.Clone());
}

containerElement.RemoveAllChildren();
containerElement.Append(clonedElements);

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your answer, that's exactly what I was looking for.

Regards

P.S.
How do you get the &lt; character in your posts?

Great, glad it helped :)

I'm not sure why the < characters are working for me - I'm using Firefox but not sure if that's why

This is what i am doing right now

foreach (var objField in objMainDoc.Descendants<SimpleField>())

           {

               string strFieldName = GetFieldName(objField);

               if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strFieldName))

               {

                   if (values.ContainsKey(strFieldName) && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(values[strFieldName]))

                   {

                       string strRunProp = null;

                       if (objField != null)

                       {

                           foreach (RunProperties objRP in objField.Descendants<RunProperties>())

                           {

                               strRunProp = objRP.OuterXml;

                               break;

                           }

                       }

                       Run objRun = new Run();

                       if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(strRunProp))

                       {

                           objRun.Append(new RunProperties(strRunProp));

                       }

                       //add the text to the place holder

                       //objRun.Append(new Text(values[strFieldName]));

                       objRun.Append(new RunProperties(tbl));

                       //replace the merge field with the value

                     //  objField.Parent.ReplaceChild<SimpleField>(objRun, objField);

                     //  objField.Parent.ReplaceChild<SimpleField>(tbl , objField);

                   }

               }

           }

i want to insert table into perticular fields in word docx file.

The problem is that I'm getting this exception:

Cannot insert the OpenXmlElement "newChild" because it is part of a tree.