In this article I will show how the Word JavaScript API can be utilized to add tables to your word document using an Office Add-In. This will be a multi part blog post as there are a lot of nuances and interesting ways in which you can play with tables in Word.

Introduction

In previous articles I have written about how to interact with a Word document to search and replace and even save the word document to Salesforce. Going back to a more basic level we are going to look at how to build tables in word.

We will be using the new Script Lab  which is a new Playground Add-In which can be used for development and general tinkering with Add-Ins. This and other articles on the topic are for demonstration purposes and are not hardened for production use.

The reference

For more information on Tables and how what methods/properties are available check out the documentation page – Table Object (JavaScript API for Word)

Creating a table 

At the most basic level a table is created by instantiating the table object and adding values to it.

insertTable(rowCount: number, columnCount: number, insertLocation: string, values: string[][])

This can be done from a number of different parents:

• The body
• A range
• A contentControl
• A paragraph

The method requires the following:

• rowCount – a number
• columnCount – a number
• insertLocation – Depends on parent – either (body: Start/End/Replace) or (range: Before/After)
• values: 2 dimentional Array – [[“This is”, “a table”], [“this is”, “a new row”]]

Using these parameters we can create a table from within the Script lab using the following code:

$("#run").click(run);

async function run() {
    try {
        await Word.run(async (context) => {

            var body = context.document.body;
            var range = context.document.getSelection();
            var myArray = [["a", "b"], ["c", "d"]];
            var table = range.insertTable(2, 2, "Before", myArray);            

            // Synchronize the document state by executing the queued commands,
            // and return a promise to indicate task completion.
                await context.sync().then(function () {
                    console.log('Table added before the start of the range.');
                });;
        });
    }
    catch (error) {
        OfficeHelpers.UI.notify(error);
        OfficeHelpers.Utilities.log(error);
    }
}

 

 

Conclusion

Using the Script Lab we have seen how we can easily insert a table into a Word document using the Office Add-In API. In future articles we will look at looking for the table we want to modify and then manipulating tables.