How to remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document?

Syncfusion® Essential® DocIO is a .NET Word library used to create, read, edit, and convert Word documents programmatically without Microsoft Word or interop dependencies. Using this library, you can remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document using C#.

To achieve this, use the BeforeClearField event to remove rows with fields not present in the data source and the MergeField event to remove rows with empty field values.

Steps to remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document:

1. Create a new .NET Core console application project.
2. Install the Syncfusion.DocIO.Net.Core NuGet package as a reference to your project from NuGet.org.
   
   

3. Include the following namespaces in Program.cs file
   C#

using Syncfusion.DocIO.DLS;
using Syncfusion.DocIO; 

4. Use the following code example to remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document.
   C#

using (FileStream fileStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Data/Template.docx"), FileMode.Open, FileAccess.ReadWrite))
{
   //Loads an existing Word document into DocIO instance.
   using (WordDocument document = new WordDocument(fileStream, FormatType.Automatic))
   {
       //Gets the employee details as IEnumerable collection.
       List<Employee> employeeList = GetEmployees();
       //Event to do manipulations when unmerged field occurs in the Word document
       document.MailMerge.BeforeClearField += RemoveRowOfDataNotInDataSource;
       //Event to remove row when fields have empty value but defined in Datasource  
       document.MailMerge.MergeField += RemoveRowsOfEmptyValue;
       //Creates an instance of MailMergeDataTable by specifying MailMerge group name and IEnumerable collection.
       MailMergeDataTable dataSource = new MailMergeDataTable("Employee", employeeList);
       //Performs Mail merge.
       document.MailMerge.ExecuteGroup(dataSource);
       //Creates file stream.
       using (FileStream outputStream = new FileStream(Path.GetFullPath(@"Output/Result.docx"), FileMode.Create, FileAccess.ReadWrite))
       {
           //Saves the Word document to file stream.
           document.Save(outputStream, FormatType.Docx);
       }
   }
}

5. Use the following helper method to remove a row if data is not defined in Data source.
   C#

private static void RemoveRowOfDataNotInDataSource(object sender, BeforeClearFieldEventArgs args)
{
   if (args.GroupName == "Employee" && !args.HasMappedFieldInDataSource)
   {
       WParagraph paragraph = args.CurrentMergeField.OwnerParagraph;
       if (paragraph.IsInCell)
       {
           WTableRow tableRow = paragraph.Owner.Owner as WTableRow;
           (tableRow.Owner as WTable).Rows.Remove(tableRow);
       }
   }
}

6. Use the following helper method to to remove the row of empty value fields.
   C#

private static void RemoveRowsOfEmptyValue(object sender, MergeFieldEventArgs args)
{
   if (args.GroupName == "Employee" && (args.FieldValue == DBNull.Value ||  args.FieldValue.ToString() == string.Empty))
   {
       WParagraph paragraph = args.CurrentMergeField.OwnerParagraph;
       if (paragraph.IsInCell)
       {
           WTableRow tableRow = paragraph.Owner.Owner as WTableRow;
           (tableRow.Owner as WTable).Rows.Remove(tableRow);
       }
   }
}

7. Use the following helper method to gets the employee details to perform mail merge.
   C#

public static List<Employee> GetEmployees()
{
    List<Employee> employees = new List<Employee>
    {
        new Employee("Nancy", "", "722 Moss Bay Blvd.", "USA"),
        new Employee("Andrew", "12/12/1988", "", "USA"),
        new Employee("Roland", "03/22/1992", "722 Moss Bay Blvd.", "USA"),
        new Employee("Margaret", "07/19/1980", "", "USA"),
        new Employee("Steven", "09/30/1995", "14 Garrett Hill", "")
    };
    return employees;
}

8. Use the following class to maintain employee details.
   C#

public class Employee
{
   public string Name { get; set; }
   public string DOB { get; set; }  
   public string Address { get; set; }
   public string Country { get; set; }

   public Employee(string name, string dob, string address, string country)
   {
       Name = name;
       DOB = dob;
       Address = address;
       Country = country;
   }
}

You can download a complete working sample to remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document from the GitHub.

Take a moment to peruse the documentation where you can find basic Word document processing options along with the features like mail merge, merge, split, and compare Word documents, find and replace text in the Word document, protect the Word documents, and most importantly, the PDF and Image conversions with code examples.

Conclusion
I hope you enjoyed learning about how to remove empty rows after mail merge in a Word document.

You can refer to our ASP.NET Core DocIO feature tour page to know about its other groundbreaking feature representations and documentation, and how to quickly get started for configuration specifications. You can also explore our ASP.NET Core DocIO example to understand how to create and manipulate data.

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