I am unable to stream a word document that I create on the fly down to the browser. I am constantly getting a message from Microsoft Word that the document is corrupt.
When I run the code via a Console Application and take ASP.NET out of the picture, the document is generated correctly with no problems. I believe everything centers around writing the file down.
Here is my code:
using (MemoryStream mem = new MemoryStream())
{
// Create Document
using (WordprocessingDocument wordDocument = WordprocessingDocument.Create(mem, WordprocessingDocumentType.Document, true))
{
// Add a main document part.
MainDocumentPart mainPart = wordDocument.AddMainDocumentPart();
new Document(new Body()).Save(mainPart);
Body body = mainPart.Document.Body;
body.Append(new Paragraph(new Run(new Text("Hello World!"))));
mainPart.Document.Save();
// Stream it down to the browser
// THIS IS PROBABLY THE CRUX OF THE MATTER <---
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=HelloWorld.docx");
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.ms-word.document";
mem.WriteTo(Response.OutputStream);
Response.End();
}
}
I have looked at a lot of links – but nothing quite works. I lot of people use MemoryStream.WriteTo
and some use BinaryWrite
– at this point I'm not sure what the correct way is. Also I've tried the longer content type, i.e. application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document
but no luck.
Some screenshots – even if you try to recover you get the same "parts are missing or invalid"
Solution for those who stumble on this question:
Within the using
directive of the WordProcessingDocument
, you must call:
wordDocument.Save();
Also to correctly stream the MemoryStream
, use this in the outer using block:
Response.ContentType = "application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document";
Response.AppendHeader("Content-Disposition", "attachment;filename=HelloWorld.docx");
mem.Position = 0;
mem.CopyTo(Response.OutputStream);
Response.Flush();
Response.End();
Use CopyTo
instead, there is a bug in WriteTo
which makes it fail to write the entire content of the buffer when the target stream does not support writing everything in one go.