Insert multiple lines of text into a Rich Text content control with OpenXML - openxml

Question

I'm having difficulty getting a content control to follow multi-line formatting. It seems to interpret everything I'm giving it literally. I am new to OpenXML and I feel like I must be missing something simple.
I am converting my multi-line string using this function.
private static void parseTextForOpenXML(Run run, string text)
{
string[] newLineArray = { Environment.NewLine, "<br/>", "<br />", "\r\n" };
string[] textArray = text.Split(newLineArray, StringSplitOptions.None);
bool first = true;
foreach (string line in textArray)
{
if (!first)
{
run.Append(new Break());
}
first = false;
Text txt = new Text { Text = line };
run.Append(txt);
}
}
I insert it into the control with this
public static WordprocessingDocument InsertText(this WordprocessingDocument doc, string contentControlTag, string text)
{
SdtElement element = doc.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.Descendants<SdtElement>().FirstOrDefault(sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.GetFirstChild<Tag>().Val == contentControlTag);
if (element == null)
throw new ArgumentException("ContentControlTag " + contentControlTag + " doesn't exist.");
element.Descendants<Text>().First().Text = text;
element.Descendants<Text>().Skip(1).ToList().ForEach(t => t.Remove());
return doc;
}
I call it with something like...
doc.InsertText("Primary", primaryRun.InnerText);
Although I've tried InnerXML and OuterXML as well. The results look something like
Example AttnExample CompanyExample AddressNew York, NY 12345 or
<w:r xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main"><w:t>Example Attn</w:t><w:br /><w:t>Example Company</w:t><w:br /><w:t>Example Address</w:t><w:br /><w:t>New York, NY 12345</w:t></w:r>
The method works fine for simple text insertion. It's just when I need it to interpret the XML that it doesn't work for me.
I feel like I must be super close to getting what I need, but my fiddling is getting me nowhere. Any thoughts? Thank you.

Answer 1

I believe the way I was trying to do it was doomed to fail. Setting the Text attribute of an element is always going to be interpreted as text to be displayed it seems. I ended up having to take a slightly different tack. I created a new insert method.
public static WordprocessingDocument InsertText(this WordprocessingDocument doc, string contentControlTag, Paragraph paragraph)
{
SdtElement element = doc.MainDocumentPart.Document.Body.Descendants<SdtElement>().FirstOrDefault(sdt => sdt.SdtProperties.GetFirstChild<Tag>().Val == contentControlTag);
if (element == null)
throw new ArgumentException("ContentControlTag " + contentControlTag + " doesn't exist.");
OpenXmlElement cc = element.Descendants<Text>().First().Parent;
cc.RemoveAllChildren();
cc.Append(paragraph);
return doc;
}
It starts the same, and gets the Content Control by searching for it's Tag. But then I get it's parent, remove the Content Control elements that were there and just replace them with a paragraph element.
It's not exactly what I had envisioned, but it seems to work for my needs.