Working With Paragraphs

The following text from the ISO/IEC 29500 specification introduces the Open XML WordprocessingML element used to represent a paragraph in a WordprocessingML document.

The most basic unit of block-level content within a WordprocessingML document, paragraphs are stored using the <p> element. A paragraph defines a distinct division of content that begins on a new line. A paragraph can contain three pieces of information: optional paragraph properties, inline content (typically runs), and a set of optional revision IDs used to compare the content of two documents.

A paragraph's properties are specified via the <pPr>element. Some examples of paragraph properties are alignment, border, hyphenation override, indentation, line spacing, shading, text direction, and widow/orphan control.

© ISO/IEC29500: 2008.

The following table lists the most common Open XML SDK classes used when working with paragraphs.

The OXML SDK Paragraph class represents the paragraph (<p>) element defined in the Open XML File Format schema for WordprocessingML documents as discussed above. Use the Paragraph object to manipulate individual <p> elements in a WordprocessingML document.

ParagraphProperties Class

Run Class

Text Object

The following code instantiates an Open XML SDK 2.0 Paragraph object and then uses it to add text to a WordprocessingML document.

Public Sub WriteToWordDoc(ByVal filepath As String, ByVal txt As String)
    ' Open a WordprocessingDocument for editing using the filepath.
    Using wordprocessingDocument As WordprocessingDocument = _
        WordprocessingDocument.Open(filepath, True)
        ' Assign a reference to the existing document body.
        Dim body As Body = wordprocessingDocument.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body

        ' Add a paragraph with some text.            
        Dim para As Paragraph = body.AppendChild(New Paragraph())
        Dim run As Run = para.AppendChild(New Run())
        run.AppendChild(New Text(txt))
    End Using

End Sub

When this code is run, the following XML is written to the WordprocessingML document referenced in the code.

<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>String from WriteToWordDoc method.</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>

Concepts