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 AsSystem.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 AsString) As XpsDocument
Dim xpsDoc As XpsDocument
' Create a WordApplication and add Document to it
Dim wordApplication As Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application = NewMicrosoft.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