---
title: "Working with Ranges in Java"
---

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## Purpose Summary

This page explains how to work with ranges to manipulate spans of content.

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In Aspose.Words, a Range is a "flat window" into an otherwise tree-like model of the document.

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If you have worked with Microsoft Word Automation, you probably know that one of the main tools to examine and modify document content is the **Range** object. **Range** is like a "window" into the document content and formatting.

Aspose.Words also has the [Range](https://reference.aspose.com/words/java/com.aspose.words/range/) class and it is designed to look and act similarly to **Range** in Microsoft Word. Although **Range** cannot cover an arbitrary portion of a document and does not have a **Start** and **End**, you can access the range covered by any document node including the [Document](https://reference.aspose.com/words/java/com.aspose.words/document/) itself. In other words, each node has its own range. The **Range** object allows you to access and modify text, bookmarks and form fields within the range.

## Retrieve Plain Text

Use the [Text](https://reference.aspose.com/words/java/com.aspose.words/range/#getText) property to retrieve plain, unformatted text of the range.

The following code example shows how to get a plain, unformatted text of a range:

{{< gist "aspose-words-gists" "f3b385f86a13b93093c214b1e7a981bf" "ranges-get-text.java" >}}

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You can download the sample file of this example from [Aspose.Words GitHub](https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java/blob/master/Examples/Data/Document.docx).

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## Delete Text

Range allows the deletion of all characters of the range by calling [delete](https://reference.aspose.com/words/java/com.aspose.words/range/#delete).

The following code example shows how to delete all characters of a range:

{{< gist "aspose-words-gists" "f3b385f86a13b93093c214b1e7a981bf" "ranges-delete-text.java" >}}

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You can download the sample file of this example from [Aspose.Words GitHub](https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-Java/blob/master/Examples/Data/Document.docx).

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