How to center text in docx4j

Question

I have a paragraph of text which I would like to appear in the center of the document. How can I do this in docx4j? I am currently using:

    PPr paragraphProperties = factory.createPPr();

    //creating the alignment
    TextAlignment align = new TextAlignment();
    align.setVal("center");
    paragraphProperties.setTextAlignment(align);

    //centering the paragraph
    paragraph.setPPr(paragraphProperties);

but it isn't working.

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 18 '14 at 09:27

You're almost there. Rather than setting this with a TextAlignment object, use a Jc instance (justification) instead:

PPr paragraphProperties = factory.createPPr();
Jc justification = factory.createJc();
justification.setVal(JcEnumeration.CENTER);
paragraphProperties.setJc(justification);

A simple way of figuring this stuff out:

Create the document (and formatting) you're looking for in Microsoft Word & save the file
Change the .docx file suffix to 'zip'
Open the zip archive, open the 'word' directory and extract the document.xml file therein
Examine the XML, which will give you clues as to what OpenXML objects to use

How to center text in docx4j

1 Answers1