Working with Ranges

What is this page about?

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

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

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 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 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 property to retrieve plain, unformatted text of the range.

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

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

Delete Text

Range allows the deletion of all characters of the range by calling Delete.

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

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

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FAQ

1. Q: How can I retrieve the plain text of a specific part of a document using a Range?
   A: Obtain the node that represents the part you are interested in (e.g., a paragraph), then use its Range.Text property. The property returns the unformatted text contained in that range.

2. Q: How do I delete a portion of text within a document with a Range?
   A: Identify the node that encloses the text you want to remove and call Delete() on its Range. This clears all characters inside the range while keeping the node itself in the document tree.

3. Q: How can I replace text inside a Range?
   A: Use the Replace method of the Range class, providing the text to find and the replacement text. The operation works on the raw text of the range, preserving the original formatting of the surrounding nodes.

   Document doc = new Document("Input.docx");
   Range range = doc.Range; // whole document
   range.Replace("old value", "new value", new FindReplaceOptions(FindReplaceDirection.Forward));
   doc.Save("Replaced.docx");