How to access OpenXML content by page number?

Question

Using OpenXML, can I read the document content by page number?

wordDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body gives content of full document.

  public void OpenWordprocessingDocumentReadonly()
        {
            string filepath = @"C:\...\test.docx";
            // Open a WordprocessingDocument based on a filepath.
            using (WordprocessingDocument wordDocument =
                WordprocessingDocument.Open(filepath, false))
            {
                // Assign a reference to the existing document body.  
                Body body = wordDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body;
                int pageCount = 0;
                if (wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text != null)
                {
                    pageCount = Convert.ToInt32(wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text);
                }
                for (int i = 1; i <= pageCount; i++)
                {
                    //Read the content by page number
                }
            }
        }

MSDN Reference

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Update 1:

it looks like page breaks are set as below

<w:p w:rsidR="003328B0" w:rsidRDefault="003328B0">
        <w:r>
            <w:br w:type="page" />
        </w:r>
    </w:p>

So now I need to split the XML with above check and take InnerTex for each, that will give me page vise text.

Now question becomes how can I split the XML with above check?

---

Update 2:

Page breaks are set only when you have page breaks, but if text is floating from one page to other pages, then there is no page break XML element is set, so it revert back to same challenge how o identify the page separations.

Caldarium

Have a read of this #14480198 – Giorgione

@PaulZahra I don't find such element (lastRenderedPageBreak) in XML – Caldarium

Answer 1

This is how I ended up doing it.

  public void OpenWordprocessingDocumentReadonly()
        {
            string filepath = @"C:\...\test.docx";
            // Open a WordprocessingDocument based on a filepath.
            Dictionary<int, string> pageviseContent = new Dictionary<int, string>();
            int pageCount = 0;
            using (WordprocessingDocument wordDocument =
                WordprocessingDocument.Open(filepath, false))
            {
                // Assign a reference to the existing document body.  
                Body body = wordDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body;
                if (wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text != null)
                {
                    pageCount = Convert.ToInt32(wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text);
                }
                int i = 1;
                StringBuilder pageContentBuilder = new StringBuilder();
                foreach (var element in body.ChildElements)
                {
                    if (element.InnerXml.IndexOf("<w:br w:type=\"page\" />", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase) < 0)
                    {
                        pageContentBuilder.Append(element.InnerText);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        pageviseContent.Add(i, pageContentBuilder.ToString());
                        i++;
                        pageContentBuilder = new StringBuilder();
                    }
                    if (body.LastChild == element && pageContentBuilder.Length > 0)
                    {
                        pageviseContent.Add(i, pageContentBuilder.ToString());
                    }
                }
            }
        }

Downside: This wont work in all scenarios. This will work only when you have a page break, but if you have text extended from page 1 to page 2, there is no identifier to know you are in page two.

Caldarium

Thanks for the answer !How to copy the page wise content into new document? – Sepaloid

is there an alternative to that for pages without page breaks – Droshky

Answer 2

You cannot reference OOXML content via page numbering at the OOXML data level alone.

• Hard page breaks are not the problem; hard page breaks can be counted.
• Soft page breaks are the problem. These are calculated according to line break and pagination algorithms which are implementation dependent; it is not intrinsic to the OOXML data. There is nothing to count.

What about w:lastRenderedPageBreak, which is a record of the position of a soft page break at the time the document was last rendered? No, w:lastRenderedPageBreak does not help in general either because:

• By definition, w:lastRenderedPageBreak position is stale when content has been changed since last opened by a program that paginates its content.
• In MS Word's implementation, w:lastRenderedPageBreak is known to be unreliable in various circumstances including
  1. when table spans two pages
  2. when next page starts with an empty paragraph
  3. for multi-column layouts with text boxes starting a new column
  4. for large images or long sequences of blank lines

If you're willing to accept a dependence on Word Automation, with all of its inherent licensing and server operation limitations, then you have a chance of determining page boundaries, page numberings, page counts, etc.

Otherwise, the only real answer is to move beyond page-based referencing frameworks that are dependent upon proprietary, implementation-specific pagination algorithms.

Hyperextension

Thanks for the details. That is what I figured out with my research as well. But can I use Word Automation from a web based interface, I mean I have the word document as a binary in my database and use this to get the page wise content using licensed Word Automation? – Caldarium

How about using Add-In Express add-in-express.com/creating-addins-blog/2013/08/07/… – Caldarium

I don't recommend using Word Automation on the server because the inherent licensing and server operation limitations stated by Microsoft, but if it works for your situation, great. – Hyperextension

The techniques discussed in the Add-in Express post you cite require Word Automation. – Hyperextension

Yes, can I use Add-In Express or just Word Automation and pass docx binary to get the page wise content? – Caldarium

You can modulo the licensing and server operation concerns I keep mentioning. Note also that DOCX files aren't usually described as binary; they're OOXML files packaged via OPC. Usually, it's DOC files (pre-2007 format) that are referred to as binary. – Hyperextension

This answer confirms I cannot do what I need, but doesn't give me a solution. Should I still give the bounty to this answer? – Caldarium

I hope you found this canonical answer to have been helpful enough to be worthy of the bounty, but, regardless, if I've conveyed a deeper understanding of the solution space to you or to future readers, I'll have accomplished my goal. – Hyperextension

fair enough, you get the bounty :) – Caldarium

Is it still true now that the lastRenderedPageBreak elements are not reliable for determining page numbers? The links about specific cases all give 404s now. – Thionate

@PeterDongan: The links are dead because Microsoft killed MSDN TechNet forums, not because lastRenderedPageBreak suddenly became reliable. If you want to search The Wayback Machine, you can probably find the articles again. For example, here's one. Feel free to update the links here if you do; I do not have time to do so myself. Thanks. – Hyperextension

Thanks. I experimented since posting that comment and found that they're still unreliable alright. I wasn't inferring that they were now reliable from the links being dead. I was just wondering if things had changed since this answer was posted eight years ago. – Thionate

Answer 3

Unfortunately, As Why only some page numbers stored in XML of docx file? answers, docx dose not contains reliable page number service. Xml files carry no page number, until microsoft Word open it and render dynamically. Even you read openxml documents like https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/documentformat.openxml.wordprocessing.pagenumber?view=openxml-2.8.1 .

You can unzip some docx files, and search "page" or "pg". Then you will know it. I do this on different kinds of docx files in my situation. All tell me the same truth. Glad if this helps.

Stress

Downvote explanation: Searching for "page" or "pg" may work for your documents but is definitely not a solution to identifying page breaks in all DOCX documents. – Hyperextension

Answer 4

List<Paragraph> Allparagraphs = wp.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.OfType<Paragraph>().ToList();

List<Paragraph> PageParagraphs = Allparagraphs.Where (x=>x.Descendants<LastRenderedPageBreak>().Count() ==1) .Select(x => x).Distinct().ToList();

Descombes

Add thee explanation about the code and how it solve the issue – Androw

Answer 5

Rename docx to zip. Open docProps\app.xml file. :

 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?>
<Properties xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/extended-properties" xmlns:vt="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/docPropsVTypes">
  <Template>Normal</Template>
  <TotalTime>0</TotalTime>
  <Pages>1</Pages>
  <Words>141</Words>
  <Characters>809</Characters>
  <Application>Microsoft Office Word</Application>
  <DocSecurity>0</DocSecurity>
  <Lines>6</Lines>
  <Paragraphs>1</Paragraphs>
  <ScaleCrop>false</ScaleCrop>
  <HeadingPairs>
    <vt:vector size="2" baseType="variant">
      <vt:variant>
        <vt:lpstr>Название</vt:lpstr>
      </vt:variant>
      <vt:variant>
        <vt:i4>1</vt:i4>
      </vt:variant>
    </vt:vector>
  </HeadingPairs>
  <TitlesOfParts>
    <vt:vector size="1" baseType="lpstr">
      <vt:lpstr/>
    </vt:vector>
  </TitlesOfParts>
  <Company/>
  <LinksUpToDate>false</LinksUpToDate>
  <CharactersWithSpaces>949</CharactersWithSpaces>
  <SharedDoc>false</SharedDoc>
  <HyperlinksChanged>false</HyperlinksChanged>
  <AppVersion>14.0000</AppVersion>
</Properties>

OpenXML lib reads wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text from <Pages>1</Pages> property . This properies are created only by winword application. if word document changed wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart.Properties.Pages.Text is not actual. if word document created programmatically the wordDocument.ExtendedFilePropertiesPart is offten null.

Zhdanov