Remove Comments of All or a Specific Author

On this page we will look at how to remove comments of all or a specific author using Aspose.Words or Open XML SDK.

Aspose.Words

In Aspose.Words you can work with comments by using the Comment class.

The following code example shows how to remove comments in a document:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git.
Document doc = new Document(MyDir + "Comments.docx");

// Collect all comments in the document.
NodeCollection comments = doc.GetChildNodes(NodeType.Comment, true);

string authorName = string.Empty;
if (authorName.Equals(string.Empty))
    // Remove all comments.
    comments.Clear();
else
{
    // Remove comments by author name.
    foreach (Comment comment in comments)
        if (comment.Author.Equals(authorName))
            comment.Remove();
}

doc.Save(ArtifactsDir + "Remove comments - Aspose.Words.docx");

Open XML SDK

You can also do the same using the Open XML SDK. At the same time, note that it looks somewhat more complicated and more cumbersome.

The following code example shows how to remove comments in a document:

// For complete examples and data files, please go to https://github.com/aspose-words/Aspose.Words-for-.NET.git.
string authorName = string.Empty;
File.Copy(MyDir + "Comments.docx", ArtifactsDir + "Remove comments - OpenXML.docx", true);

using WordprocessingDocument doc = WordprocessingDocument.Open(ArtifactsDir + "Remove comments - OpenXML.docx", true);

// Add a main document part to the new document.
MainDocumentPart mainPart = doc.MainDocumentPart;
// Get the comments part
WordprocessingCommentsPart commentsPart = mainPart.WordprocessingCommentsPart;
if (commentsPart != null)
{
    // Get the comments
    Comments comments = commentsPart.Comments;
    // Create a list to hold comments to remove
    List<Comment> commentsToRemove = new();

    foreach (var comment in comments.Elements<Comment>())
        if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(authorName) || comment.Author == authorName)
            commentsToRemove.Add(comment);

    IEnumerable<string> commentIds =
    commentsToRemove.Select(r => r.Id.Value);

    // Remove the comments
    foreach (Comment comment in commentsToRemove)
        comment.Remove();

    // Save changes to the comments part
    commentsPart.Comments.Save();

    // Delete the "CommentRangeStart" for each deleted comment in the main document.
    List<CommentRangeStart> commentRangeStartToDelete =
        mainPart.Document.Descendants<CommentRangeStart>().Where(c => commentIds.Contains(c.Id.Value)).ToList();

    foreach (CommentRangeStart rangeStart in commentRangeStartToDelete)
        rangeStart.Remove();

    // Delete the "CommentRangeEnd" for each deleted comment in the main document.
    List<CommentRangeEnd> commentRangeEndToDelete =
        mainPart.Document.Descendants<CommentRangeEnd>().Where(c => commentIds.Contains(c.Id.Value)).ToList();

    foreach (CommentRangeEnd rangeEnd in commentRangeEndToDelete)
        rangeEnd.Remove();

    // Delete the "CommentReference" for each deleted comment in the main document.
    List<CommentReference> commentRangeReferenceToDelete =
        mainPart.Document.Descendants<CommentReference>().Where(c => commentIds.Contains(c.Id.Value)).ToList();

    foreach (CommentReference reference in commentRangeReferenceToDelete)
        reference.Remove();

You can download the sample file of this example from Aspose.Words GitHub.

For more information about Aspose.Words features please visit Working with Comments.