Is there any way to clear content but preserve line feed in headers and footers

Aspose.Words Product Family
1

I am using aspose-words:21.2:jdk17.
Is there any way by which we can preserve line feed but remove rest of the content from all the 3 types of headers and footers? I just want to empty the section. I tried with couple of options but in all of them I am losing line feeds.

2

@nobilex Could you please attach your input and expected output documents here for our reference? We will check the documents and provide you more information.

3

before.docx (9.9 KB)

after.docx (8.2 KB)

4

@nobilex You can use the following code to remove text, leaving the paragraphs in the header:

Document doc = new Document("C:\\Temp\\in.docx");
// Get header.
HeaderFooter headerPrimary = doc.getFirstSection().getHeadersFooters().getByHeaderFooterType(HeaderFooterType.HEADER_PRIMARY);
// Remove all text from the header, leaving empty paragraphs.
if(headerPrimary!=null)
    headerPrimary.getChildNodes(NodeType.RUN, true).clear();
        
doc.save("C:\\Temp\\out.docx");

The above code supposes there is only textual content in the header. Alternative you can use the following approach:

Document doc = new Document("C:\\Temp\\in.docx");
// Get header.
HeaderFooter headerPrimary = doc.getFirstSection().getHeadersFooters().getByHeaderFooterType(HeaderFooterType.HEADER_PRIMARY);
// Remove all text from the header, leaving empty paragraphs.
if (headerPrimary != null)
{
    for (Paragraph p : (Iterable<Paragraph>)headerPrimary.getChildNodes(NodeType.PARAGRAPH, true))
        p.removeAllChildren();
}

doc.save("C:\\Temp\\out.docx");

if it is required to preserve also a soft line break, you can use code like this:

Document doc = new Document("C:\\Temp\\in.docx");
// Get header.
HeaderFooter headerPrimary = doc.getFirstSection().getHeadersFooters().getByHeaderFooterType(HeaderFooterType.HEADER_PRIMARY);
// Remove all text from the header, leaving empty paragraphs.
if (headerPrimary != null)
{
    for (Paragraph p : (Iterable<Paragraph>)headerPrimary.getChildNodes(NodeType.PARAGRAPH, true))
    {
        for (Node child : (Iterable<Node>)p.getChildNodes(NodeType.ANY, false))
        {
            if (child.getNodeType() == NodeType.RUN)
            {
                Run r = (Run)child;
                if (r.getText().contains(ControlChar.LINE_BREAK))
                {
                    r.setText(ControlChar.LINE_BREAK);
                    continue;
                }
            }
            child.remove();
        }
    }
}

doc.save("C:\\Temp\\out.docx");