How to: Delete text from a cell in a spreadsheet document (Open XML SDK)

In the Open XML SDK, the SpreadsheetDocument class represents an Excel document package. To open and work with an Excel document, you create an instance of the SpreadsheetDocument class from the document. After you create the instance from the document, you can then obtain access to the main workbook part that contains the worksheets. The text in the document is represented in the package as XML using SpreadsheetML markup.

To create the class instance from the document, call one of the Open() methods. Several are provided, each with a different signature. The sample code in this topic uses the Open(String, Boolean) method with a signature that requires two parameters. The first parameter takes a full path string that represents the document that you want to open. The second parameter is either true or false and represents whether you want the file to be opened for editing. Any changes that you make to the document will not be saved if this parameter is false.

The following using statement code example calls the Open method.

The using statement provides a recommended alternative to the typical .Open, .Save, .Close sequence. It verifies that the Dispose method (internal method used by the Open XML SDK to clean up resources) is automatically called when the closing brace is reached. The block that follows the using statement establishes a scope for the object that is created or named in the using statement, in this case document.

The basic document structure of a SpreadsheetML document consists of the Sheets and Sheet elements, which reference the worksheets in the workbook. A separate XML file is created for each worksheet. For example, the SpreadsheetML for a Workbook that has two worksheets name MySheet1 and MySheet2 is located in the Workbook.xml file and is shown in the following code example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?> 
<workbook xmlns=http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships">
    <sheets>
        <sheet name="MySheet1" sheetId="1" r:id="rId1" /> 
        <sheet name="MySheet2" sheetId="2" r:id="rId2" /> 
    </sheets>
</workbook>

The worksheet XML files contain one or more block level elements such as SheetData. sheetData represents the cell table and contains one or more Row elements. A row contains one or more Cell elements. Each cell contains a CellValue element that represents the value of the cell. For example, the SpreadsheetML for the first worksheet in a workbook, that only has the value 100 in cell A1, is located in the Sheet1.xml file and is shown in the following code example.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> 
<worksheet xmlns="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/spreadsheetml/2006/main">
    <sheetData>
        <row r="1">
            <c r="A1">
                <v>100</v> 
            </c>
        </row>
    </sheetData>
</worksheet>

Using the Open XML SDK 2.5, you can create document structure and content that uses strongly-typed classes that correspond to SpreadsheetML elements. You can find these classes in the DocumentFormat.OpenXML.Spreadsheet namespace. The following table lists the class names of the classes that correspond to the workbook, sheets, sheet, worksheet, and sheetData elements.

In the following code example, you delete text from a cell in a SpreadsheetDocument document package. Then, you verify if other cells within the spreadsheet document still reference the text removed from the row, and if they do not, you remove the text from the SharedStringTablePart object by using the Remove method. Then you clean up the SharedStringTablePart object by calling the RemoveSharedStringItem method.

In the following code example, you verify that the cell specified by the column name and row index exists. If so, the code returns the cell; otherwise, it returns null.

In the following code example, you verify if other cells within the spreadsheet document reference the text specified by the shareStringId parameter. If they do not reference the text, you remove it from the SharedStringTablePart object. You do that by passing a parameter that represents the ID of the text to remove and a parameter that represents the SpreadsheetDocument document package. Then you iterate through each Worksheet object and compare the contents of each Cell object to the shared string ID. If other cells within the spreadsheet document still reference the SharedStringItem object, you do not remove the item from the SharedStringTablePart object. If other cells within the spreadsheet document no longer reference the SharedStringItem object, you remove the item from the SharedStringTablePart object. Then you iterate through each Worksheet object and Cell object and refresh the shared string references. Finally, you save the worksheet and the SharedStringTable object.

The following code sample is used to delete text from a specific cell in a spreadsheet document. You can run the program by calling the method DeleteTextFromCell from the file "Sheet3.xlsx" as shown in the following example, where you specify row 2, column B, and the name of the worksheet.

The following is the complete code sample in both C# and Visual Basic.

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