XWPF - remove cell text

Question

I have a .docx file that contains a single table. I want to remove all text from rows 2 to the end. However the method myTable.getRow(somecounter).getCell(somecounter2).setText("") doesn't work as it only concatenates " " to the existing value. I also tried making a XWPFRun and doing run.setText("") created from myTable.getRow(sc).getCell(sc2).getParagraphs().get(0).createRun() but it doesn't work aswell.

Also tried the solution from this thread, no luck this time :(

Any ideas how to easily remove text from the cell? My idea is to make a new table from scratch and fill it with content but it seems really arduous.

Answer 1

Your requirement "to remove all text from rows 2 to the end" will be a little bit complicated to fulfil since a Word table cell can contain much other things than only text.

Consider the following table:

So if the requirement is to remove all content from rows 2 to the end, then you could simply replace all cells with new clean ones. Or at least with ones which have only an empty paragraph in it.

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.poi.xwpf.usermodel.*;

import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTTc;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTTc;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTP;

/*
needs the full ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar as mentioned in https://poi.apache.org/faq.html#faq-N10025
since the CTRowImpl is not fully shipped with poi-ooxml-schemas-3.13-*.jar
*/

public class WordCleanTableRows {

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

  FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("document.docx");
  XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument(fis);

  List<XWPFTable> tables = doc.getTables();
  XWPFTable table = tables.get(0);

  XWPFTableRow[] rows = table.getRows().toArray(new XWPFTableRow[0]);
  for (int r = 0; r < rows.length; r++) {
   if (r > 0) {
    XWPFTableRow row = rows[r];
    CTTc[] cells = row.getCtRow().getTcList().toArray(new CTTc[0]);
    for (int c = 0; c < cells.length; c++) {
     CTTc cTTc = cells[c];
     //clear only the paragraphs in the cell, keep cell styles
     cTTc.setPArray(new CTP[] {CTP.Factory.newInstance()});
     cells[c] = cTTc;
    }
    row.getCtRow().setTcArray(cells);
    //System.out.println(row.getCtRow());
   }
  }

  doc.write(new FileOutputStream("new document.docx"));

 }
}

This needs the full ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar as mentioned in https://poi.apache.org/faq.html#faq-N10025 since the CTRowImpl is not fully shipped with poi-ooxml-schemas-3.13-*.jar.

Without the full ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar you could simply remove all rows except the first one and add new ones.

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.poi.xwpf.usermodel.*;

public class WordCleanTableRows2 {

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

  FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("document.docx");
  XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument(fis);

  List<XWPFTable> tables = doc.getTables();
  XWPFTable table = tables.get(0);

  XWPFTableRow[] rows = table.getRows().toArray(new XWPFTableRow[0]);
  for (int r = 0; r < rows.length; r++) {
   if (r > 0) {
    XWPFTableRow row = rows[r];
    table.removeRow(1); //remove second row. others shift upwards
    table.createRow(); //add new row at the end
   }
  }

  doc.write(new FileOutputStream("new document.docx"));

 }
}

Edit:

The following should work without ooxml-schemas-1.3.jar and do the same as my first example.

import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.FileInputStream;

import java.util.List;

import org.apache.poi.xwpf.usermodel.*;

import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTP;
import org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.STOnOff;

import java.math.BigInteger;

public class WordCleanTableRows3 {

 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {

  FileInputStream fis = new FileInputStream("document.docx");
  XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument(fis);

  List<XWPFTable> tables = doc.getTables();
  XWPFTable table = tables.get(0);

  XWPFTableRow[] rows = table.getRows().toArray(new XWPFTableRow[0]);
  for (int r = 0; r < rows.length; r++) {
   if (r > 0) {
    XWPFTableRow row = rows[r];
    List<XWPFTableCell> cells = row.getTableCells();
    for (XWPFTableCell cell : cells) {
     //get CTTc and replace the CTPArray with one empty CTP
     cell.getCTTc().setPArray(new CTP[] {CTP.Factory.newInstance()});

     //set some default styles for the paragraphs in the cells:
     //http://grepcode.com/file/repo1.maven.org/maven2/org.apache.poi/ooxml-schemas/1.1/org/openxmlformats/schemas/wordprocessingml/x2006/main/CTParaRPr.java  
     CTP cTP = cell.getCTTc().getPArray(0);
     cTP.addNewPPr();
     cTP.getPPr().addNewRPr();
     cTP.getPPr().getRPr().addNewB().setVal(STOnOff.ON);
     cTP.getPPr().getRPr().addNewColor().setVal("FF0000");
     cTP.getPPr().getRPr().addNewSz().setVal(BigInteger.valueOf(40));
    }
   }
  }

  doc.write(new FileOutputStream("new document.docx"));

 }
}

The org.openxmlformats.schemas.wordprocessingml.x2006.main.CTP is shipped with poi-ooxml-schemas-3.13-*.jar.