How to Insert Bullets in Word Document using C#

Word documents are the favorite choice when it comes to creating reports and documenting content. Using bullets in a document enhances the readability of the document and helps in organizing the information. These also help in comparisons of data and highlight key information. As a .NET developer, you can provide the functionality of working with bullets from within your .NET application using C#/VB.NET.

In this blog, we’ll show how to work with bullets by creating bullets and sub-bullets in the Word document using NPOI API in C#.

How to Insert Multi-Level Bullets in a Document using Microsoft Word?

Before we can jump into writing code for creating multi-level bullets in a document, let’s have a look at how we can do the same using Microsoft Word. Microsoft Word lets you add bulleted content to your document. You can add headings and sub-headings as bullets and sub-bullets in the document.

Steps to Add Bullets to Document using Microsoft Word

You can add bulleted content to your document as shown in the steps below.

1. Select the lines of text you want to convert to a bulleted list
2. Clic Home> Paragraph> Bullets. Each line or paragraph becomes a bullet in the list.

How to Insert Multi-Level Bulleted List in Word using C#?

Now that we have seen how to insert a multi-level bulleted list in a DOCX file using Microsoft Word, we will now proceed towards doing the same using NPOI API for .NET in our C# application. If you haven’t already installed NPOI API, you can go through our comprehensive guide for NPOI API installation in your .NET project.

Step-by-Step Guide to Adding Multi-Level List in Word Document using C#

In order to create a bulleted list in a Word document using NPOI API in C#, use the following steps:

1. Create an instance of XWPFDocument class
2. Create an instance of XWPFNumbering class
3. Add a paragraph using the instance of XWPFParagraph
4. Create bullet lists by using the SetNumID method on the paragraph class instance

//Create document
XWPFDocument doc = new XWPFDocument();
//Create numbering
XWPFNumbering numbering = doc.CreateNumbering();
string abstractNumId = numbering.AddAbstractNum();
string numId = numbering.AddNum(abstractNumId);
//Create paragragh and set its list level
XWPFParagraph para1 = doc.CreateParagraph();
XWPFRun run1 = para1.CreateRun();
run1.SetText("Introduction to File Formats");
para1.SetNumID(numId, "0");
//Create paragragh and set the list level
XWPFParagraph para2 = doc.CreateParagraph();
XWPFRun run2 = para2.CreateRun();
run2.SetText("Popular File Formats and their Applications");
para2.SetNumID(numId, "0");
//Create paragragh and apply multi level list 
XWPFParagraph para3 = doc.CreateParagraph();
XWPFRun run3 = para3.CreateRun();
run3.SetText("File Formats - Spreadsheet File Formats");
para3.SetNumID(numId, "0");
para3 = doc.CreateParagraph();
run3 = para3.CreateRun();
run3.SetText("XLSX");
para3.SetNumID(numId, "1");
para3 = doc.CreateParagraph();
run3 = para3.CreateRun();
run3.SetText("XLS");
para3.SetNumID(numId, "1");
para3 = doc.CreateParagraph();
run3 = para3.CreateRun();
run3.SetText("Converst XLS to XLSX");
para3.SetNumID(numId, "2");
//Save the file and Launch
using (FileStream sw = new FileStream("BullettedListUsingCSharp.doc", FileMode.Create))
{
    doc.Write(sw);
}

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about how to insert bullets in a Word document using C# by utilizing NPOI API. NPOI API is an open-source free-to-use .NET API that lets you work with Word documents from within your .NET application. You can have a look at other NPOI examples for working with document files in C#. For more examples on working with NPOI , stay tuned.