Working On Microsoft Word Content Using VSTO Add-In

In my previous article, we saw, how can we add a custom ribbon to word and how to add buttons and actions to those buttons.

Here is the link to the previous article.

In this article, we will build on top of the previous one.

After adding custom ribbon and custom buttons, on click of those buttons, we will add some logic to work on the content of Microsoft word document.

We will learn how to get contents of a word document runtime and work on those documents, like scanning them.

This can help in adding validations in word documents/ content validation. Also, we can use this to add some custom text at various places of document in bulk.

So let’s get going with this new topic.

1. Let’s add a new button to our ribbon now by adding the button in CustomActionsRibbon.xml (validateButton in below)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<customUI xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/2009/07/customui" onLoad="Ribbon_Load">
	<ribbon>
		<tabs>
			<tab idMso="TabAddIns">
				<group id="ContentGroup" label="Content">
					<button id="textButton" label="Insert Content" screentip="Text" onAction="OnTextButton" supertip="Inserts text content at the cursor location."/>
					<button id="msgButton" label="Show Message" screentip="Message Box" onAction="OnMsgButton" supertip="Shows Message Box."/>
					<button id="validateButton" label="Validate" screentip="Validate Contents" onAction="OnValidateButton" supertip="Validates Document Contents."/>
				</group>
			</tab>
		</tabs>
	</ribbon>
</customUI>

2. Add Action method for this button in class CustomActionsRibbon.cs

public void OnValidateButton(Office.IRibbonControl control) {
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application wdApplication = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application;
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document activeDoc = wdApplication.ActiveDocument;
    if (!Regex.IsMatch(activeDoc.Paragraphs.First.Range.Text, "Title", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)) {
        MessageBox.Show(@ "First Paragraph must have text "
            "Title"
            " inside");
    }
}

In the above method, we are trying to match our first paragraph in the document to make sure that it should have word “Title” within.

3. Build app and run it.

Open a blank document, add text like below (save this document for later testing) and try to click on Validate (in Add-ins Menu at top)

4. Another thing we can do apart from checking text content is, we can check style of the paragraph.

To see the paragraph style in word, Click on view menu and select Outline or Draft from "Views" section as shown below, it will show Paragraph style on left

5. Now let’s modify the same method that we wrote above to check that the Style of first paragraph should be "Title"

public void OnValidateButton(Office.IRibbonControl control) {
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application wdApplication = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application;
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document activeDoc = wdApplication.ActiveDocument;
    //Fetch style of first paragraph
    var style = ((Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Style) activeDoc.Paragraphs.First.get_Style()).NameLocal;
    if (!Regex.IsMatch(style, "Title", RegexOptions.IgnoreCase)) {
        MessageBox.Show(@ "First Paragraph must have style as "
            "Title"
            "");
    }
}

6. Build and run the code.

When clicking the Validate button with document shown in step 4 above, it doesn’t show any popup because first paragraph style is "Title" already. 

7. Let’s change the style of the first paragraph to "Heading 1" from Home menu

Now click on validate, it will now show an error.

8. If you would like to work on each paragraph of the document, this is how you can access it

public void OnValidateButton(Office.IRibbonControl control) {
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application wdApplication = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application;
    Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document activeDoc = wdApplication.ActiveDocument;
    foreach(Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Paragraph paragraph in activeDoc.Paragraphs) {
        //your code here   
    }
}

Likewise, we can do many other things with word, like doing technical/functional guide document validations, inserting same content at multiple locations of document (based on some conditions) in bulk, etc.

I have attached the source code for reference.