How to set ContentControl.Range to the current ContentControl I am working from?

Question

I am not finding a way to set the ContentControl.Range.Text from where the C# is executing from (inside the content control). Perhaps I should be looking at it from a completely different perspective.

Currently I have a content control that produces a set of text with some text between [] square brackets and I want to select text and format the colour by setting the start and end of the range of characters between the []. I am stuck on trying to set the initial range to the contentcontrol I am currently using.

Most of what I have managed/found/patched together below.

object word;
Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Document _PWdDoc;

try
{
    word = System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.GetActiveObject("Word.Application");
    //If there is a running Word instance, it gets saved into the word variable
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
    //If there is no running instance, it creates a new one
    Type type = Type.GetTypeFromProgID("Word.Application");
    word = System.Activator.CreateInstance(type);
}

Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application oWord = (Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Application) word;
_PWdDoc = oWord.ActiveDocument;

System.Collections.IEnumerator ContentX = _PWdDoc.ContentControls.GetEnumerator();
//Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ContentControl ContentX = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ContentControls.Item[]; 
//Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.Range rng = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ContentControl.Range.Duplicate(ref ContentX);

//var rngX = Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ContentControl.Range(ContentX);
//Microsoft.Office.Interop.Word.ContentControl cc1 = ContentX;

Excuse the coding mess but it's all I can come up with with the minimal experience I have with this.

Now I have gotten the IEnumerator fo the Content Control(I think) I have no idea how to use it besides from what I have read, they say to iterate through the IEnumerables accessing each of them. That's not what I want to do. I want 1 content control. The current one that I am working in. I want to find it's range and assign it to a value. Then in that range's "text" I want to do some [fancy] highlighting.

Answer 1

Determining whether the current selection or a specific Range is in a content control and doing something with that content control is not a trivial matter. Most other Word objects will return something that they're "in"; content controls do not.

So the approach I use is to

• create a Range that reaches from the current selection (or a specific Range) back to the beginning of the document
• count the number of content controls in that range
• then check whether the current selection is in the same range as the last content control of the extended range.
• if it is, then I know the selection is within a content control and I can access the content control.

Here's some sample code. The snippet that calls the function I use to return the information:

        Word.Range rng = null;
        //Substitute a specific Range object if working with a Range, rather than a Selection
        Word.ContentControl cc = IsSelectionInCC(wdApp.Selection.Range);

        if ( cc != null)
        {
            rng = cc.Range;
            rng.HighlightColorIndex = Word.WdColorIndex.wdYellow;
        }

The function:

    private Word.ContentControl IsSelectionInCC(Word.Range sel)
    {
        Word.Range rng = sel.Range;
        Word.Document doc = (Word.Document) rng.Parent;
        rng.Start = doc.Content.Start;
        int nrCC = rng.ContentControls.Count;
        Word.ContentControl cc = null;
        bool InCC = false;

        rng.Start = doc.Content.Start;

        if (nrCC > 0)
        {
            if (sel.InRange(doc.ContentControls[nrCC].Range))
            {
                InCC = true; //Debug.Print ("Sel in cc")
                cc = doc.ContentControls[nrCC];
            }
            else
            {
                sel.MoveEnd(Word.WdUnits.wdCharacter, 1);
                if (sel.Text == null)
                {
                    //Debug.Print ("Sel at end of cc")
                    InCC = true;
                    cc = doc.ContentControls[nrCC];
                }
            }
        }
        return cc;
    }