Removing content controls from Docx

Question

I want to replace content controls(drop down list only) in a docx with actual text and then applying some logic on document to extract out tables using apache-poi. If I don't do it then cells having content control are not extracted. If, I save my docx manually as Word 97-2003(*.doc) then it asks to removes all content controls and replace it with text being selected so I am planning to convert docx to doc to get rid of content controls. I've explored so far:

• I came across Aspose.words library but it is paid one and can do a job in just 3 lines of code(tested with trial version).

• I tried POI itself but did not understand how to do it exactly. I tried below code:

   XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument(new FileInputStream("<DOCX_FILE_PATH>"));`
   FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream("<PATH_FOR_DOC_FILE>");
   doc.write(fos);
   fos.close();
  

It does create doc file but did not remove content controls as it did with aspose.

• I am restraining for now to try JODConverter because it relies on LibreOffice or OpenOffice- We don't have it on server and don't have permission to install new softwares.
• I looked into Docx4J but looks like it can't do it after checking its API.

what would be a best way to handle this scenario, is there any way to replace content controls directly? Thanks!

Answer 1

docx4j can remove content controls

The essence of the sample code at https://github.com/plutext/docx4j/blob/master/docx4j-samples-docx4j/src/main/java/org/docx4j/samples/ContentControlRemove.java reproduced below:

    String input_DOCX = System.getProperty("user.dir") + "/some.docx";

    // resulting docx
    String OUTPUT_DOCX = System.getProperty("user.dir") + "/OUT_ContentControlRemove.docx";

    // Load input_template.docx
    WordprocessingMLPackage wordMLPackage = Docx4J.load(new File(input_DOCX));

    // There is no xml stream
    FileInputStream xmlStream = null;

    Docx4J.bind(wordMLPackage, xmlStream, Docx4J.FLAG_BIND_REMOVE_SDT);

    //Save the document 
    Docx4J.save(wordMLPackage, new File(OUTPUT_DOCX), Docx4J.FLAG_NONE);