Word get table from table

Office Open XML

Office Open XML is introduced by Microsoft to work with documents. For e.g.: — read/write MS word documents.

Prerequisites

• Visual Studio
• MS Word Document
• Open XML SDK

Execute below command to Install DocumentFormat.OpenXml SDK in your project

How to find first table from word document?

Here .First() is extension method to find first table from word document.

The WordprocessingDocument Methods

In this article, we are glad to show you with 4 methods to extract multiple tables from one Word document to another.

Table is the most used mean we use to hold tabular information. It arranges data in rows and columns, presenting readers a clear view of all information. A long document can contain many tables, so there is the need to export them to a new document for various purposes.

Here are our 4 approaches.

Method 1: Batch Export All Tables from One Document to Another

1. First and foremost, press “Alt+ F11” to trigger the VBA editor in Word.
2. Then click “Normal” project and the “Insert” tab next.
3. Choose “Module” on the drop-down menu.
4. And double click to open the module and bring out the editing space on the right side.
5. Now copy and paste the following macro there:

Sub ExtractTablesFromOneDoc()
  Dim objTable As Table
  Dim objDoc As Document
  Dim objNewDoc As Document
  Dim objRange As Range
 
  Set objDoc = ActiveDocument
  Set objNewDoc = Documents.Add
 
  For Each objTable In objDoc.Tables
    objTable.Range.Select
    Selection.Copy
 
    '  Paste tables to new document in rich text format.
    Set objRange = objNewDoc.Range
    objRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
    objRange.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteRTF
    objRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
    objRange.Text = vbCr
  Next objTable
 
End Sub

1. Finally, click “Run”.

This macro will extract both tables and their captions as well.

Method 2: Extract a Specific Table from a Document

Now, in case there are many tables in your document, but you need to send one particular table to someone. Then the following macro will do you a lot help.

1. First, install and run macro following steps in method 1.
2. Second, replace that macro with this one:

Sub ExtractSpecificTables()
  Dim objTable As Table
  Dim objDoc As Document
  Dim objNewDoc As Document
  Dim objRange As Range
  Dim strTable As String
 
  strTable = InputBox("Enter the table number: ")
  Set objDoc = ActiveDocument
  Set objNewDoc = Documents.Add
 
  objDoc.Tables(strTable).Range.Select
  Selection.Copy
 
  Set objRange = objNewDoc.Range
  objRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
  objRange.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteRTF
 
End Sub

1. Now there will be an input box popping up.
2. Enter a table number and click “OK”.

Method 3: Batch Extract All Tables from Multiple Documents

1. To start with, arrange all files in one folder.
2. Then install and run a macro with exact above instructions.
3. Replace macro with this one:

Sub ExtractTablesFromMultiDocs()
  Dim objTable As Table
  Dim objDoc As Document, objNewDoc As Document
  Dim objRange As Range
  Dim strFile As String, strFolder As String
 
  '  Initialization
  strFolder = InputBox("Enter folder address here: ")
  strFile = Dir(strFolder & "" & "*.docx", vbNormal)
 
  Set objNewDoc = Documents.Add
 
  '  Process each file in the folder.
  While strFile <> ""
    Set objDoc = Documents.Open(FileName:=strFolder & "" & strFile)
    Set objDoc = ActiveDocument
 
    For Each objTable In objDoc.Tables
      objTable.Range.Select
      Selection.Copy
 
      Set objRange = objNewDoc.Range
      objRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
      objRange.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteRTF
      objRange.Collapse Direction:=wdCollapseEnd
      objRange.Text = vbCr
    Next objTable
 
    objDoc.Save
    objDoc.Close
    strFile = Dir()
  Wend
 
End Sub

1. Now in the prompting box, enter the folder address where you store your documents and click “OK”.

Method 4: Copy Tables out Manually

However, if you don’t feel comfortable with VBA, you are fine to do the job manually as long as there are a limited number of tables.

1. Firstly, click the plus sign at upper-left corner to select target table.
2. Then press “Ctrl+ C” to copy it.
3. Next open a new document.
4. And press “Ctrl+ V” to paste the table in new document.
5. Remember to save the new document.

Handle with Document Problems

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Author Introduction:

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After a summer break (or  I can say a busy summer) I decided to blog about a problem that I bumped into and I see that is bothering many people but I didn’t manage to find nice implementation.

Recently I had some task to extract data from word documents and well I thought: “Easy one… just use the API that Microsoft has and in all will be done in no-time”. I was so naïve to believe that the API will be without bugs (some of them reported and many unreported ones…).

One of the greatest challenges that I faced was exactly determining the structure of the table in a word document. The table can have horizontally or vertically merged cells and table header row(s). I didn’t pay much attention for the borders and shades since that is artistic thing and not really important for the table structure (when referring the information that the table holds).

So first thing is simple table (no merging, just pure table):

Let’s suppose that I have created following classes for representing Cells and Tables

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using Word = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;
using Office = Microsoft.Office.Core;
using Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word;
using System.Windows.Forms;
using Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word;
using System.Xml;

public class CustomCell
{
public int cellRow;
public int cellColumn;
public int cellRowSpan;
public int cellColumnSpan;
public String cellText;
}
public class CustomTable
{
public int rowsField;
public int columnsField;
public List cells;
}

In order to get the structure of the given table we simply need to loop through each row and cell and its contents. Simple as 1,2,3… If we have selected a table in Word we can use the following code:

Table wordTable = Application.Selection.Tables[1];
CustomTable table = new CustomTable();
table.cells = new List();
for (int row = 1; row <= wordTable.Rows.Count; row++)
{
for (int column = 1; column <= wordTable.Rows[row].Cells.Count; column++)
{
CustomCell cell = new CustomCell();
cell.cellColumn = column;
cell.cellRow = row;
cell.cellText = wordTable.Cell(row, column).Range.Text;
table.cells.Add(cell);
}
}

This code works also for a table like this:

Usually the users get creative and want something more in the tables like merged columns or cells for better data representation. In these cases this code is useless…  In case of vertically merged cells this code will still work but it is not the case if there are horizontally merged cells. There is a nice solution to use the Cell.Next method that the Word API offers. In that case the code would look like:

Table wordTable = Application.Selection.Tables[1];
Cell wordCell = wordTable.Cell(1, 1);
CustomTable table = new CustomTable();

table.cells = new List();
while(wordCell!=null)
{
CustomCell cell = new CustomCell();
cell.cellColumn = wordCell.RowIndex;
cell.cellRow = wordCell.ColumnIndex;
cell.cellText = wordCell.Range.Text;
table.cells.Add(cell);
wordCell = wordCell.Next;
}

Here is some a little bit more complex table:

So when you think that all your problems are solved someone comes and asks for exact row and column span of each cell because maybe they want to have Word documents viewer or just embed the table in a web site. In this case the API doesn’t help with a method or attribute.. you have to find your own algorithm how to get this information. I read and read many ideas and forums: some had broken cells apart and them merged them (?!), then someone was using the height value/weight attribute to decide if the cells have row or column span and many more creative ideas. They all seemed a bit impossible for me because I thought of many exceptions that might happen and the code wouldn’t work properly. So I bumped into a comment saying that the XML structure of the table is a good place to start. So since there is a lot of documentation how to form a legal XML structure for a table I will refer to the following link http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/office/ff951689.aspx

After you master somewhat the structure you will understand the following code that goes through the cells and gets the information you need:

Table wordTable = Application.Selection.Tables[1];
Cell wordCell = wordTable.Cell(1, 1);
CustomTable table = new CustomTable();
table.cells = new List();

String s = Application.Selection.Tables[1].Range.XML;
XmlDocument xmlDoc = new XmlDocument();
xmlDoc.LoadXml(s);
XmlNamespaceManager nsmgr = new XmlNamespaceManager(xmlDoc.NameTable);
nsmgr.AddNamespace("w", "http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2003/wordml");

while (wordCell != null)
{
CustomCell cell = new CustomCell();
cell.cellRow = wordCell.RowIndex;
cell.cellColumn = wordCell.ColumnIndex;
int colspan;
XmlNode exactCell = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//w:tr[" + wordCell.RowIndex.ToString() + "]/w:tc[" + wordCell.ColumnIndex.ToString() + "]/w:tcPr/w:gridSpan", nsmgr)[0];
if (exactCell != null)
{
colspan = Convert.ToInt16(exactCell.Attributes["w:val"].Value);
}
else
{
colspan = 1;
}

int rowspan = 1;
Boolean endRows = false;
int nextRows = wordCell.RowIndex + 1;
XmlNode exactCellVMerge = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//w:tr[" + wordCell.RowIndex.ToString() + "]/w:tc[" + wordCell.ColumnIndex.ToString() + "]/w:tcPr/w:vmerge", nsmgr)[0];

if ((exactCellVMerge == null) || (exactCellVMerge != null && exactCellVMerge.Attributes["w:val"] == null))
{
rowspan = 1;
}
else
{
while (nextRows <= wordTable.Rows.Count && !endRows)
{
XmlNode nextCellMerge = xmlDoc.SelectNodes("//w:tr[" + nextRows.ToString() + "]/w:tc[" + wordCell.ColumnIndex.ToString() + "]/w:tcPr/w:vmerge", nsmgr)[0];
if (nextCellMerge != null && (nextCellMerge.Attributes["w:val"] == null))
{
nextRows++;
rowspan++;
continue;
}
else
{
endRows = true;
}
}
}
cell.cellRowSpan = rowspan;
cell.cellColumnSpan = colspan;
cell.cellText = wordCell.Range.Text;
table.cells.Add(cell);
wordCell = wordCell.Next;
}

Last words: Copy, paste, test, use, reuse but don’t abuse 🙂