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I want to merge two or more docx files (append them after each other) or move one part of the document(XWPFParagraph) to other place.

The problem is that listings always breaks after such an operation. Say we have a listing in a document which has sequence numbers then we have other listing in another document which has bullets or letters. Than after the copy all of the bullets becomes numbers (or worse numbers which starts from where the previous listing has been ended).

I have tried several solutions :
-traversing BodyElements and copying Paragraphs and Tables by hand like here.
-attaching a newBody into an existing one like here here

Aside from page scoped styles they work well. But the listings never. Is that means the listing symbols are stored as page scoped information (otherwise it would be copyied successfully with the XWPFParagraph)? If yes than why and where?

I have dig myself into the javadoc: https://poi.apache.org/apidocs/dev/org/apache/poi/xwpf/usermodel/XWPFDocument.html
But couldn't find anything about the listings.

beatrice
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    I don't know Apache, but I do know the underlying Word Open XML, so this information *might* help you: Numbered lists are controlls by `ListTemplate` definitions. A ListTemplate is a numbering definition stored centrally in the document. A reference to it is part of the paragraph-level formatting. But it's possible that the definition of a given ListTemplate reference ID is *different* in another document, so the paragraph being imported would pick up the ListTemplate definition of the target document. – Cindy Meister Jan 18 '20 at 11:22

1 Answers1

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The Word numberings (numbered lists but bullet lists also) in Office Open XML file format are stored in /word/numbering.xml of the *.docx ZIP archive. There are abstractNum elements describing the list format and num elements referencing the abstractNum. The numId of the numelements are referenced in paragraphs of /word/document.xml to set which numbering formats shall be used in that paragraph. Paragraphs referencing the same numId are in the same list. Paragraphs referencing different numId are in different lists.

In apache poi there are XWPFNumbering representing the document part /word/numbering.xml and XWPFAbstractNum representing the abstractNum.

Until now there is no way creating XWPFAbstractNum from scratch without using the low level ooxml-schemas classes.

Also, as far as I know, there is no simple way to merge /word/numbering.xml document parts of different Word documents because of the need handling the different Ids in /word/numbering.xml as well as their occurrences in /word/document.xml. This is very complex and I do not know any free library which can do this properly.

In general, as far as I know, there is no simple way to merge different Word documents together because of the complex storage in Word file formats. All provided possibilities using free code are only halfway useful (traversing and copying), if not wrong and useless (simply attaching multiple document bodys one after the other) at all.

Axel Richter
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