Dynamically add mergefields in existing docx-document

Question

Is it possible to add mergefields to an existing .docx document without using interop, only handling with open SDK from CodeBehind?

Answer 1

Yes this is possible, I've created a little method below where you simply pass through the name you want to assign to the merge field and it creates it for you. The code below is for creating a new document but it should be easy enough to use the method to append to an existing document, hope this helps you:

using System;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Packaging;
using DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Wordprocessing;

namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {

            using (WordprocessingDocument package = WordprocessingDocument.Create("D:\\ManualMergeFields.docx", WordprocessingDocumentType.Document))
            {
                package.AddMainDocumentPart();

                Paragraph nameMergeField = CreateMergeField("Name");
                Paragraph surnameMergeField = CreateMergeField("Surname");

                Body body = new Body();
                body.Append(nameMergeField);
                body.Append(surnameMergeField);
                package.MainDocumentPart.Document = new Document(new Body(body));
            }
        }

        static Paragraph CreateMergeField(string name)
        {
            if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(name))
            {
                string instructionText = String.Format(" MERGEFIELD  {0}  \\* MERGEFORMAT", name);
                SimpleField simpleField1 = new SimpleField() { Instruction = instructionText };

                Run run1 = new Run();

                RunProperties runProperties1 = new RunProperties();
                NoProof noProof1 = new NoProof();

                runProperties1.Append(noProof1);
                Text text1 = new Text();
                text1.Text = String.Format("«{0}»", name);

                run1.Append(runProperties1);
                run1.Append(text1);

                simpleField1.Append(run1);

                Paragraph paragraph = new Paragraph();
                paragraph.Append(new OpenXmlElement[] { simpleField1 });
                return paragraph;
            }
            else return null;
        }
    }
}

You can download the Open Xml Productivity Tool from this url(if you do not already have it)http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5124 This tool has a "Reflect Code" functionality.So you can manually create a merge field in an MS Word document and then open up the document with the Productivity Tool and see a C# code sample on how to do this in code!It's very effective an I've used this exact tool to create the sample above.Good luck