WPF does not support
functionality to view Microsoft Word documents but there is a work around this
problem. WPF DocumentViewer control is used to display fixed documents such as
an XPS (XML Paper Specification) document. We can open a Word document if we
can convert a Word document to an XPS document. This conversion is possible by
using Office Interop and Office Tools frameworks that is used to work with
Office documents.
Add Reference to XPS and Office
Interop Assemblies
Before we do any actual work, we must add reference to the
following assemblies.
* ReachFramework.dll
* Microsoft.Office.Tools.v9.0.dll
* Microsoft.Office.Tools.Word.v9.0dll
* Microsoft.VisualStudio.Tools.Office.Runtime.v9.0.dll
* Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.dll
The first assembly, ReachFramework.dll hosts the
functionality for XPS documents and rest of the assemblies hosts the
functionality Office Interop and Office Tools support.
Note: You must also
install 2007 Microsoft Office Add-in: Microsoft Save as PDF or XPS that you can
download using the following link. http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041&displaylang=en
To add reference to these assemblies, you right click on Add
Reference on the project name in Solution Explorer. On the .NET Framework,
select ReachFramework and other assemblies from the list and click OK button.
Figure 1 shows ReachFramework in Add Reference dialog.
Figure 1
You may have multiple
assemblies installed on your machine. Make sure you select Version 12 for
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word assemblies as you see in Figure 2, otherwise your
conversion will fail.
Figure 2
Once you have added the reference to assemblies, you must
import the following namespaces to your code behind.
Imports
System.IO
Imports
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word
Imports
Microsoft.Win32
Imports System.Windows.Xps.Packaging
Convert Doc to XPS
The SaveAs method of Document class available in
OfficeInterop allows us to save a word document as an XPS document. However,
you must make sure you have version 12 of assembly added to your project as I
mentioned before.
The ConvertWordDocToXPSDoc method takes a full path of a
word document file and new full path of XPS document and converts doc file to
an xps file.
Private Sub BrowseButton_Click(ByVal
sender As System.Object,
ByVal e As
System.Windows.RoutedEventArgs)
' Create
OpenFileDialog
Dim dlg
As Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog
= New Microsoft.Win32.OpenFileDialog()
' Set filter
for file extension and default file extension
dlg.DefaultExt = ".doc"
dlg.Filter = "Word
documents (.doc)|*.doc"
If
(dlg.ShowDialog() = True) Then
Dim
fileName As String
= dlg.FileName
If
(dlg.FileName.Length > 0) Then
SelectedFileTextBox.Text =
dlg.FileName
Dim
newXPSDocumentName As String
=
String.Concat(System.IO.Path.GetDirectoryName(dlg.FileName), "\", _
System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(dlg.FileName),
".xps")
documentViewer1.Document =
ConvertWordDocToXPSDoc(dlg.FileName,
newXPSDocumentName).GetFixedDocumentSequence()
End If
End If
End Sub
XPS Viewer Application
Let's create a WPF Application using Visual Studio 2010 and
add a TextBox, Button, and a DocumentViewer. Here is XAML code looks like.
<Grid>
<DocumentViewer HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="0,42,0,0"
Name="documentViewer1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Height="508" Width="766" />
<TextBox Height="29" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="6,6,0,0"
Name="SelectedFileTextBox" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="276" />
<Button Content="Browse" Height="30" HorizontalAlignment="Right" Margin="0,6,353,0"
Name="BrowseButton" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="122" Click="BrowseButton_Click"
/>
</Grid>
The application looks like Figure 3 where Browse button is
used to browse word documents on your machine.
Figure 3
The Browse button click event handler code looks like this
where we convert a word document to an XPS document and view that in a
DocumentViewer control.
Private Function ConvertWordDocToXPSDoc(ByVal wordDocName As String, ByVal
xpsDocName As String)
As XpsDocument
Dim
xpsDoc As XpsDocument
' Create a
WordApplication and add Document to it
Dim
wordApplication As
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application = New Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application()
wordApplication.Documents.Add(wordDocName)
Dim doc
As Document
= wordApplication.ActiveDocument
' You must
make sure you have Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Dll version 12.
' Version 11
or previous versions do not have WdSaveFormat.wdFormatXPS option
Try
doc.SaveAs(xpsDocName, WdSaveFormat.wdFormatXPS)
wordApplication.Quit()
xpsDoc = New
XpsDocument(xpsDocName, System.IO.FileAccess.Read)
Return
xpsDoc
Catch
ex As Exception
End Try
Return Nothing
End Function
Run the Application
Just run your
application, click the Browse button, select a word document and your output
will look like Figure 4.
Figure 4