In Word documents, indentation is a paragraph format used to adjust the distance between paragraph body and page margin. It includes left indent, right indent, first line indent and hanging indent. Left indent and right indent can be applied to all lines of a paragraph, while first line indent can only be applied to first line of a paragraph. As for the hanging indent, it can be applied to every line of the paragraph except the first one. This article introduces how to programmatically set paragraph indents in a Word document using Spire.Doc for .NET.
Install Spire.Doc for .NET
To begin with, you need to add the DLL files included in the Spire.Doc for .NET package as references in your .NET project. The DLL files can be either downloaded from this link or installed via NuGet.
PM> Install-Package Spire.Doc
Set Paragraph Indents in Word
The table below lists some of the core classes and properties that are used to set different paragraph indents in a Word document.
| Name | Description |
| ParagraphFormat Class | Represents the format of a paragraph. |
| ParagraphFormat.LeftIndent Property | Returns or sets the value that represents the left indent for paragraph. |
| ParagraphFormat.RightIndent Property | Returns or sets the value that represents the right indent for paragraph. |
| ParagraphFormat.FirstLineIndent Property | Gets or sets the value for first line or hanging indent. Positive value represents first-line indent, and Negative value represents hanging indent. |
The detailed steps are as follows:
- Create a Document instance.
- Load a sample Word document using Document.LoadFromFile() method.
- Get a specified section using Document.Sections[] property.
- Get a specified paragraph using Section.Paragraphs[] property.
- Get the paragraph format using Paragraph.Format property, and then set the paragraph indent using the above listed properties of ParagraphFormat class.
- Save the document to another file using Document.SaveToFile() method.
- C#
- VB.NET
using Spire.Doc;
using Spire.Doc.Documents;
namespace WordIndent
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
//Create a Document instance
Document doc = new Document();
//Load a sample Word document
doc.LoadFromFile("sample.docx");
//Get the first paragraph and set left indent
Paragraph para1 = doc.Sections[0].Paragraphs[0];
para1.Format.LeftIndent = 30;
//Get the second paragraph and set right indent
Paragraph para2 = doc.Sections[0].Paragraphs[1];
para2.Format.RightIndent = 30;
//Get the third paragraph and set first line indent
Paragraph para3 = doc.Sections[0].Paragraphs[2];
para3.Format.FirstLineIndent = 30;
//Get the fourth paragraph and set hanging indent
Paragraph para4 = doc.Sections[0].Paragraphs[3];
para4.Format.FirstLineIndent = -30;
//Save the document to file
doc.SaveToFile("Indent.docx", FileFormat.Docx2010);
}
}
}
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